Language existed long before writing, emerging probably simultaneously with
sapience, abstract thought and the Genus Homo.
As long ago as 25,000-30,000 years
BP, humans were painting pictures on cave walls. Whether these pictures were telling
a "story" or represented some type of "spirit house" or ritual
exercise is not known.
Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could
be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a
written language was beginning to develop. One of the earliest examples was found in
the excavations of Uruk in Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the
crystallization of the Sumerian culture.
For the next step toward the development of an alphabet, we must
go to Egypt where picture writing had developed sometime near the end of the 4th
millennium BC.
One of the earliest examples is the name of NAR-MER, either the first or
second Pharoah of an united Egypt in 3100 BCE.
clipped from: www.historian.net 
