Tokens are small clay cylinders, cones, spheres, etc., used in the Near East circa 8000 B.C. until advent of writing. Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas at Austin recognized, in the early 1970's, that they are precursors of both mathematics and writing.

Apparently tokens appeared around the same time as people changed from hunting and gathering to agriculture. The tokens, as Schmandt-Besserat says, "were part and parcel of the Neolithic phenomenon; that is, the so-called agricultural revolution.". The earliest simply-shaped tokens represented a specific quantity of basic agricultural commodities such as grain and sheep. A specific shape of token always represented of a particular item. For example, "the cone ... stood for a small measure of grain, the sphere represented a large measure of grain, the ovoid stood for a jar of oil.". Two jars of oil seemed represented by two ovoids, three jars by three ovoids, and so on -- an abstraction of the things being counted, in a specific, precise system. (The notion of "fiveness" had not yet been abstracted the count.

The later complex economy of cities invoked a diversity of token shapes with complicated designs of incisions and holes. Standardizing tokens allowed for record-keeping and contracts as counting by pebbles or twigs could not. A token collection could represent a future agreed transaction, or stored in an archive (in a temple or palace) to record of a past transaction. The Mesopotamians devised two principle sorage systems. One involved stringing pierced tokens on a cord with ends attached to a solid lump of clay, called a "bulla". Bullae fit in the palm of a hand and are stamped with a cylinder seal identifying the transactingparties. This prevent later tampering, which would break the seals.

The other storing method was inside a hollow clay envelope, marked by a seal.

These two methods were contemporaneous, but applied differently. Says Schmandt-Besserat, "For reason we do not know, plain tokens were most often secured by envelopes and complex tokens by bullae." Of the two systems, storing tokens in clay envelopes had greater influence on the development of mathematics. "A clay envelope has one obvious drawback as a means of storing information: it is not transparent; if you forget what is inside, the only way to find out is to break open the seal." So tokens were stamped outside of envelope before sealing. Outside marks then served as reference; and the envelope could be opened to check contents if dispute arose about the marks.

Finally, in token evolution the two systems of bullae and envelopes merged. Simple tokens stamped on a solid lump, or tablet, of clay, keping only the tablet. Within a couple of hundred years, this new system was also used for complex tokens, but here, drawing the complicated token images on the clay. This new system, circa 3000 B.C., provided greater use and storage, but with a certain loss of security. These stamped or drawn marks on clay tablets invoked a numeration system and writing. (The very word "writing" is from a Greek word meaning "scraping".)