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Small tablets made out of clay were used from 5500 BC Tărtăria tablets and later from 4th millennium BC onwards as a writing medium in Sumerian, other Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations. The Tărtăria tablets of the Danubian civilisation may be older still, having been carbon dated to before 4000BC, but their interpretation remains controversial. Sumerian cuneiform characters were engraved on the tablets using a stylus. Later the tablets were left outside inorder to dry or even grilled in a kennal. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries.
In the Minoan cultures writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting. Tablets serving as labels, with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region the tablets were never fired deliberately, as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile; some modern scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now, as an aid to preservation.
