Here clay tablets were used for administrative texts by the Sumerian’s, now referred to as Cuneiform Script. This suggests that the formation of the first writing system was based fundamentally on the beginning of a class system. With the farmers, land owners and workers having a clear place in the hierarchy of importance to their society. This also allowed people to work on a site and receive an amount of the harvest for their labour. The amount they received had to be agreed upon and remembered, this created a problem between land owner and worker. A writing system was the answer. Therefore we can see that even from this primitive writing system a hierarchy had emerged. For instance, if the owner of the land knew how to read and write and his worker didn’t, he had an opportunity to be dishonest to his worker and say they agreed on a lower price for labour, then they actually did. But what if the worker and owner both didn’t know how to read and write Cuneiform? Would there have been an external writer to meet with? This would add another level of hierarchy, potentially leading to misinterpretation or corruption within the system. Another example of a power shift made possible by those able to read and write, can be seen in the 16th Century, following the years of Spanish Conquest of South America, when the Spaniards employed Quipu for administering their new empire. Quipu was a form of mathematical writing using thousands of knots on hundreds of colourful strings, previously used by the Inca Empire. The Spaniards couldn’t read or write Quipu so they were dependant on native professionals. Once the Spaniards realised these professionals could easily cheat them, Quipu was phased out for Latin script and Numerals. However, a social hierarchy was already evident at this point. This shows how the ruling classes needed to be able to read and write, in order to control an empire, despite the unimportance of literacy amongst the lower classes. It didn’t sto>