In human history, with the development of people's communication, simple spoken language can no longer meet the needs of ideological exchange and action. There are some important things to record, and there is an urgent need for a tool and method to record them. Before the invention of writing, there was a legend that ropes were tied into contracts, stones were piled up and wood was carved into contracts. Character is the symbol system of recording language and the most important auxiliary tool of language. The appearance of writing has broken through the limitation of time and space of audio language. The development of Chinese characters has gone through several stages, such as body writing, picture writing, hieroglyphic writing, written writing and pinyin writing. The oldest written languages in the world are Sumerian, Egyptian, Indian Sanskrit, Elamite and China Chinese. Text comes from pictures, and the original text is a readable picture. Later, it gradually changed from picture text to text. Written words do not need realistic description, just write out the characteristics, which are generally good and can be understood by people. Early characters were book deeds, books were made of pictures, and deeds were made of marks. Writing is one of the important conditions for the development of civilization. With words, human knowledge can be recorded and widely spread in space and time. When Sumerians established slave city-states in the two river basins, they invented writing. At first, it was hieroglyphics, and later, for the convenience of writing, it evolved into cuneiform. Cuneiform characters have been used in the two river basins for thousands of years. In the way of writing characters, they use a wet and soft clay tablet as the carrier of characters, and use a small wooden stick or reed pole to obliquely press some strokes on it to form characters. Because these strokes are all cuneiform, they are called cuneiform. Clay chips can be stored for a long time after drying or oven drying. It is said that there were many such clay tablets in the government and temples at that time. There are still about 30 thousand pieces so far. Modern scholars have been able to read cuneiform characters on the blackboard.

The ancient Egyptians also used hieroglyphics in the early days, and later invented Pinyin, which had a great influence on the development of western characters. The Phoenicians living on the east coast of the Mediterranean (Lebanon and Syria on the Mediterranean coast today) are famous for their maritime trade and colonization. Around BC13rd century, they mainly formulated the first batch of alphabetic characters in history, which were composed of 22 consonants (excluding vowels), called Phoenician alphabet. Later, the Phoenician alphabet was introduced into ancient Greece, resulting in the Greek alphabet. Later, Latin letters and Slavic letters were born from Greek letters, which became the same origin of various letters in Europe. The ancient Egyptians invented cursive script in the way of writing. In the Nile Delta, there is a reed-like plant-papyrus. People cut papyrus into small pieces of appropriate length, cut it open and flatten it, put it in order, connect it into pieces, and dry it in the sun to become papyrus. They use things like reed stalks as pens, dip them in the unmodulated ink of rape juice and black smoke, and then they can write on grass paper. An ancient Egyptian scribe Amos (about 1650 BC) copied a piece of mathematical paper on papyrus, which is still preserved in the British Museum. Modern scholars have been able to translate and read the words in this herbal book. These few clay tablets and papyrus books provide us with many precious ancient information, which is of great significance to the study of the history of human civilization.

1900, British archaeologist Arthur John Evans found some clay tablets on the ruins of the ancient palace in Knossos, Crete, on which some characters were obviously engraved.

The words of the oldest clay tablet fragments were carved around 2000 BC-1650 BC. The characters of more modern clay tablets were carved from BC 1750 to BC 1450. Of course, there are also words carved on stones.

The writing instruments used in ancient Greece were made of hard-skinned reed. This kind of pen tip is hard and versatile. The hardness of this new type of pen is equivalent to that of iron pen and wooden pen, and it is convenient to write on wax board, so it is widely used. Also known as reed pen

In the 2nd century BC, papyrus was already a popular writing paper in Mediterranean countries. During this period, in addition to Greece and other countries in Asia Minor, the demand for papyrus in the Roman Empire was also increasing, resulting in a shortage of papyrus and rising prices. Elder Porini told us that around 197- 156 BC, the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty cut off the supply of papyrus in order to prevent its rival Eumenesll in Pegamon Asia Minor from building the world's largest library. Parchment, a word originated from Bacamon, is a substitute for papyrus paper with smooth writing surface made of leather. In fact, the history of leather used for writing began as early as 2500 BC. Bacamon people improved their processing procedures and produced smooth white leather paper, which can be written on both sides.

From the Middle Ages to the19th century, quill pens, as a writing tool, recorded every stage of European civilization. (pen made of animal feathers)

With the commercial activities of the Silk Road, the manufacture and use of China paper gradually spread to the northwest. A paper mill was built in Baghdad, Persia in 793. In the next 100 years, paper quickly spread all over Europe. /kloc-people began to study metal pens in the 0/5th century, and it was not until 1800 that pens were mass-produced.