How old is writing?

~5,300 years old

History

The oldest writing systems appear around 3400 to 3200 BC in Mesopotamia (cuneiform) and Egypt (hieroglyphs). Writing was invented independently at least three or four times: there, in China around 1250 BC, and in Mesoamerica by about 900 to 600 BC. Modern humans have existed for roughly 300,000 years, so written records cover under 2% of our history.