One great technology with which we are perhaps most familiar is writing. Writing developed from lists of items to full prose rendition of verbal sentences around 3000 BC but this development appears most prominently in archaeology around 2500 BC in the finds of the Tel Fara region of Mesopotamia. The Book of Enoch survives as arguably the oldest religious prose writing (scripture) we have existing today. It is recorded in the Book of Jasher that Enoch (Sumerian En-men-dur-ana living in the Sumerian Copper-Stone Age around 3300 to 3000 BC) was first to learn how to write testimonial prose. This was at the time when cuneiform writing on clay and stone was limited to lists and numbers. Archaeologists date the start of the so-called Fara Period when writing prose books became possible and commonplace to around 2500 BC, the 25th century BC. Enoch, the first person to write like this, using a form of writing that could record speech and thought, said to his son (Biblical Methuselah) that he started writing before his marriage. This would be around the 31st century BC (around 3150 BC). [Adam was created in the 39th century BC according to calculations based on the ancient Seder Olam biblical chronology and Enoch was born over 600 years later so around 3200 BC.] Sumerian history records that he famously ascended with angels to where the throne of God is. Genesis says this was in his 365th year which would put it in the 29th century BC (around 2850 BC). The majority of the Book of Enoch consists of writings which report to be from this time. Clearly he had been writing before then according to the account of his first dream. So writing characteristic of the Fara Period may have existed as early as the 31st century BC and the Book of Enoch texts or many of them may have existed in the 28th century BC. The Fara Period known to archaeology extends from around 2500 to 2000 BC but the existence of Book of Enoch may show it started centuries prior to this when Enoch started writing these scriptures still existing today.
