it represents but to its name as well. Phonetic system: graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages: Verbal: grapheme (logogram) represents a whole word. Syllabic: grapheme represents a syllable. Alphabetic: grapheme represents an elementary sound. The best known picture writing system of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols are: Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, Vinča symbols (Tărtăria tablets), Early Indus script, In the Old World, true writing systems developed from neolithic writing in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BCE). Locations and timeframes Proto-writing The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age were not a sudden invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions of symbol systems that cannot be classified as proper writing, but have many of the characteristics of writing. These systems may be described as "proto-writing". They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols to convey information, but it probably directly contained no natural language. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BCE, and include: The Jiahu symbols found carved in tortoise shells in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BCE. Most archaeologists consider these not directly linked to the earliest true writing. Vinča symbols, sometimes called the "Danube script", are a set of symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennia BCE) artifacts from the Vinča culture of Central Europe and Southeast Europe. The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium may also be an example of proto-writing. The Indus script, which from 3500 BCE to 1900 BCE was used for extremely short inscriptions. Even after the Neolithic, several cultures went through an intermediate stage of proto-writing before they used proper writing. The quipu of the Incas (15th century CE), sometimes called "talking knots", may have been such a system. Another example is the pictographs invented by Uyaquk before the development of the Yugtun syllabary for the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language in about 1900. Bronze Age writing Writing emerged in many different cultures in the Bronze Age. Examples are the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, Indus script, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica. The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts around 1600 BCE. The