Thousands of years ago, in the Fertile Crescent, likely home of the Garden of Eden, corps of scribes developed systems of cuneiform measurement and accounting in the form of listicles. Scholars now believe these lists may have gone beyond tallies or business record systems; they may have comprised the first literary form as described by James Vincent in LitHub below.
The growth of collections of listicles–essentially libraries–corresponded to the rise of city states. Does the history of libraries hold the key to understanding the rise of civilization?