 But because of the many ancient translations, no one is really sure which actually came first.Kermit’s discussion even takes in a theory by an actual archaeologist who did her work in the early eighties, Denise Schmandt-Besserat, which proposes an earlier "token" writing using sculpted beads for words and ideas; according to Schmandt-Besserat, the earliest cuneiform writing that we have today is a matter of these "tokens" first pressed into clay to leave an imprint.Later the same marks were drawn on soft clay with a sharp stick, which eventually led to writing.