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Read a passage about the development of written language. You have 45 seconds to read the passage. Begin reading now.

Pictographs

	Pictographs are very simple pictures that represent a word or idea. This artwork is the earliest known form of writing, with archaeological discoveries of pictographs dating back to 3000 BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Scholars believe that pictographs developed independently in many different parts of the world, including the Middle East, China, and Mesoamerica. Because early pictographs were meant to resemble physical objects, they tended to represent nouns that referred to concrete things, but as pictographs in the ancient world became visually simpler and more abstract, they stopped representing actual objects. Instead, they began to represent abstract concepts and phonetic sounds. In time, pictographs became the basis for modern writing systems.