François Desset, the new Champollion.

[Ludicus]

Un Français déchiffre une écriture de plus de 4000 ans ...

In English.

François Desset has succeeded in deciphering Linear Elamite, a writing system used in Iran 4,400 years ago. In its archaic proto-Elamite version (from 3300 BC), it joins the two oldest writing systems known in the world, the proto-cuneiform of the Mesopotamians and the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Enough to modify the knowledge that we had until then on the origin of writing!



The announcement - very rare - must have delighted the spirits of Father Barthélémy, Sylvestre de Sacy or Champollion. French archaeologist François Desset, from the Archéorient Laboratory in Lyon, announced on November 27, 2020 that he had succeeded in deciphering inscriptions that are 4,400 years old! All were written in linear Elamite, a script used by the Elamites who then populated Iran. The scholars gathered online to learn about this discovery from the cultural property department of the Universita degli Studi di Padova in Padua (Italy) were enthusiastic. Here is indeed more than a century this writing system, used on the Iranian plateau in the ancient kingdom of Elam (now Iran) between the end of the 3 rd millennium and the beginning of 2th millennium before our era, escaped decryption, as is still the case for the Cretan linear A or the writing of the Indus valley. Between marks of admiration and congratulations from colleagues, the Frenchman, fresh from the University of Tehran (Iran) where he has been teaching since 2014, explained in English that: " This writing had been discovered for the first time on the ancient site of Susa (Iran) in 1901 and that for 120 years we had not been able to read what had been inscribed 4,400 years ago for lack of having found the key " . Something now done this year (thanks to the opportunity offered by quarantine in his apartment in Tehran and the collaboration of three other colleagues, Kambiz Tabibzadeh, Matthieu Kervran and Gian-Pietro Basello).


This first step of the decryption, published in 2018, culminated this year in the complete decryption, which will be published scientifically in 2021. Thus, as an example, the decryption of a magnificent silver vase discovered in the region of Marv Dasht in the 1960s and now kept at the National Museum in Tehran (Iran), where we can now read: " To the lady of Marapsha [toponym], Shumar-asu [her name], I did this silver vase. In the temple which will be famous by my name, Humshat, I have placed it as an offering for you with kindness " . The result of years of hard work. " I have been working on these writing systems since 2006," explains the researcher at Sciences et Avenir .I did not wake up one morning telling myself that I had deciphered linear elamite. It took me over 10 years and I was never sure I would get there. "


Linear Elamite writing notes a particular language, Elamite. It is a linguistic isolate which cannot be attached at present to any other known linguistic family, such as Basque. " Until this decipherment, everything concerning the populations occupying the Iranian Plateau came from Mesopotamian writings . These new discoveries will finally allow us to access the own point of view of the men and women occupying a territory they designated by Hatamti, while the term Elam by which we have known it until then, in fact corresponds only to an external geographical concept, formulated by their Mesopotamian neighbors ".

"Contemporary writing systems"

The oldest examples of writing known to date come from Mesopotamia (current Iraq) and date back to the Bronze Age, around 3300 years BC: these are proto-cuneiform tablets. But the decipherment of the linear Elamite calls into question this supremacy! " We find in fact that around 2300 BC, a parallel writing system existed in Iran, and that its oldest version - called Proto-Elamite writing , (3300 BC - 2900 BC). . -C) - dating back as far in time as the first Mesopotamian cuneiform texts says François Desset!. also, I can now say that writing did not first appear in Mesopotamia and then later in Iran: these two systems, the Mesopotamian proto-cuneiform and the Iranian proto-Elamite, were in fact contemporary! There was not a mother script of which the proto-Elamite would be the daughter, there were two sister scriptures. On the other hand, in Iran, there were not two independent writing systems either as specialists thought until then, with the proto-Elamite on one side and the linear Elamite on the other. , but the same writing which has been subjected to historical evolution and has been transcribed with variations in two distinct periods. "

This completely changes the perspective on the appearance of the writing system in the Middle East since it is now more accurate to say that Iran has developed its own writing system "at the same time" as in Mesopotamia and that the Iranian plateau should no longer be ignored in historical reconstructions dealing with the origins of writing ...


Green, the spread of writing Linear Elamite area in the 4th / 3rd e millennium BC © François Desset

It is this most recent form of Iranian writing (linear Elamite) that has been deciphered. At the present time, these are forty inscriptions from southern Iran, from the ancient city of Susa, via Fars (with the region of Kam Firouz and the plain of Marv Dasht, just next to the famous Achaemenid site of Persepolis) then the Iranian southeast with Shahdad and the famous site of Konar Sandal / Jiroft. Unlike the Mesopotamian cuneiform, which is a mixed writing system combining phonograms (signs transcribing a sound) with logograms (signs transcribing a thing, an idea, a word), the linear Elamite presents its unique characteristic. the world's 3 rdmillennium BC, to be a purely phonetic writing (with signs noting syllables, consonants and vowels). Used from around 3300 to 1900 BC, Iranian writing has evolved considerably between its oldest texts (the Proto-Elamite tablets) and the most recent (the linear Elamite texts), notably with a process "skimming". Of the 300 initial signs making it possible to note proper names in the proto-Elamite tablets (the vast majority of which is currently kept at the Louvre Museum), only 80 to 100 will remain in linear Elamite afterwards. , its most recent version. About a hundred signs used continuously for some 1400 years and generally written from right to left and top to bottom. "To work, we divided the forty or so texts available to us into 8 corpuses, depending on the origins and the periods. Because linear elamite was used from 2300 to 1900 BC under the reign of different rulers and dynasties and in different regions ", continues the archaeologist . Most of the texts are fairly repetitive royal inscriptions, dedicated to ancient gods, like : " I am [name], great king of [name] , son of [name of father] , I made this item for [name of god or person] " .

The click of the "gunagi vases"

For François Desset, the decryption "click" occurred in 2017 during the analysis of a corpus of 8 texts written on silver vases, qualified as "gunagi vases", dated around 2000-1900 BC. BC and from graves in the Kam-Firouz region (currently in a private collection in London). As these vases presented very repetitive sign sequences, standardized indeed, the archaeologist was able to identify the signs used to note the names of two rulers, Shilhaha and Ebarti II (both having reigned around 1950 BC). C.) and the main deity then worshiped in southwestern Iran, Napirisha.



Linear Elamite inscription in the upper part of this silver vase from Marv Dasht (Iran), dated 3rd millennium BC © François Desset

This first step of the decryption, published in 2018, culminated this year in the complete decryption, which will be published scientifically in 2021. Thus, as an example, the decryption of a magnificent silver vase discovered in the region of Marv Dasht in the 1960s and now kept at the National Museum in Tehran (Iran), where we can now read: " To the lady of Marapsha [toponym], Shumar-asu [her name], I did this silver vase. In the temple which will be famous by my name, Humshat, I have placed it as an offering for you with kindness " . The result of years of hard work. " I have been working on these writing systems since 2006," explains the researcher at Sciences et Avenir .I did not wake up one morning telling myself that I had deciphered linear elamite. It took me over 10 years and I was never sure I would get there. "
Linear Elamite writing notes a particular language, Elamite. It is a linguistic isolate which cannot be attached at present to any other known linguistic family, such as Basque. " Until this decipherment, everything concerning the populations occupying the Iranian Plateau came from Mesopotamian writings . These new discoveries will finally allow us to access the own point of view of the men and women occupying a territory they designated by Hatamti, while the term Elam by which we have known it until then, in fact corresponds only to an external geographical concept, formulated by their Mesopotamian neighbors ".



Terracotta cone with linear Elamite inscriptions dating from around 2500-2300 BC © François Desset

This breakthrough in decryption has important implications in three areas, continued François Desset: " on Iranian history; on the development of writing in Iran in particular, and in the Middle East in general, with considerations on continuity. between the Proto-Elamite and linear Elamite writing systems; and on the Hatamtite (Elamite) language itself, now better documented in its earliest form and now made accessible for the first time by a writing system other than the Mesopotamian cuneiform (see box).

For Massimo Vidale, the Italian protohistorian organizer of the Padua conference, (whose Sciences et Avenir has just published the work on the site of " Hatra, the city of God-Solei " (Iraq), in his magazine dated December 2020 currently on newsstands), "France, by this new decryption, maintains its primacy in the" cracking "of old lost writing systems!" . As for François Desset, he has already embarked on the decryption of the oldest state of Iranian writing, the proto-Elamite tablets, for which he considers to have now opened a "highway".

Regarding the decryption of ancient scriptures

We must not confuse language (spoken sounds) and writing (visual signs). Thus, the same writing system can be used to note different languages. For example, the Latin alphabet currently makes it possible to transcribe French, English, Italian and Turkish for example. Likewise, the cuneiform writing of the Mesopotamians made it possible to transcribe several languages ​​such as Akkadian (Semitic language), Old Persian (Indo-European language) or even Elamite and Sumerian (linguistic isolates). Conversely, a language can also be transcribed by different writing systems such as Persian (an Indo-European language) which is currently written as well with the Arabic alphabet in Iran (and sometimes the Latin alphabet with the surprising phenomenon of fingilish ), that the Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan whereas it was noted in the past with a cuneiform system in the Achaemenid period (ca. 520-330 BC, for Old Persia ) or the Aramaic alphabet in the Sassanid period (3 rd -7 thcentury of our era for Middle Persia). In the case of the Elamite language, it was known until now only through the cuneiform writing. With the decryption of linear Elamite writing carried out by François Desset, we now have access to this language through a writing system probably developed specifically for it and therefore better reflecting the phonological subtleties of this language than cuneiform writing.

Some great "decipherers":

Father Barthélémy (1716-1795) deciphered the Palmyrean alphabet in 1753, then in 1754 the Phoenician alphabet.
Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810-1895) one of the four co-decipherers of cuneiform writing noting the Akkadian language.
Michael Ventris (1922-1956) deciphered in 1952 the "linear B", one of the three writings discovered in Knossos (Crete) used in the 2 nd millennium BC to note an archaic form of Greek.
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Now, I would like to hear our resident archaeologist.

[Abdülmecid I]

That's a very interesting breakthrough! I think it's a bit too early to argue whether the Sumerian and Elamite were developed simultaneously, but there were already indications that the region between Iraq and Iran was one of the pioneers in writing. The oldest examples of clay tokens (bullae), usually considered as a primitive form of counting, exchanging information and thus "writing" were found in the Zagros region, not very far away from Elam. What I found most intriguing is Desset's claim that linear Elamite were purely phonetic, which is revolutionary for the standards of the era. The Sumerian never ended up as a mix of logographic and phonetic system, while even the Akkadian scribes of the Seleucid era used logograms from time to time (limiting themselves to the most common signs, usually, unless they wanted to show off their knowledge). Proto-Elamite, though, if they are ever deciphered, will almost certainly include just pictograms, anything else is as likely as the Tărtăria tablets having been written in early Dacian.

[sumskilz]

The talk about proto-Elamite pre-dating cuneiform is a silly distraction from Desset's accomplishment. As a system, it's linear Elamite (c. 2300 BCE) that is analogous to cuneiform (c. 3200 BCE). There is no evidence that proto-Elamite dates back as far as proto-cuneiform.

Dash lines indicate possible influence:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I would also add a dash line between cuneiform and proto-Canaanite.

Unfortunately, there aren't much more than twenty short linear Elamite inscriptions, but more could be found.

What I found most intriguing is Desset's claim that linear Elamite were purely phonetic, which is revolutionary for the standards of the era.

It looks like the same system as cuneiform when cuneiform is fully written out. These are from Desset's previous publication:

E/Ia-ba-ra-at = Ebarat
Na-pi-ri-ša = Napiriša

It wasn't necessary to use logograms in cuneiform, they were just faster to write. Knowing them all would have required more training, but I don't think the scribal class were particularly worried about that since it granted them job security and preserved their status.

Canaanite was functionally the same as well, at least initially, because every consonant carries a vowel, and every West Semitic syllable consists of a consonant and a vowel. They just didn't bother to specify the vowel because it doesn't matter that much to the meaning, so much fewer characters were required. Although two of the consonants (y and w) are semivowels so in pronunciation they had a tendency to morph into vowels. Which is how they would have been when the Greeks first encountered the system, as is evidenced by the fact that the Greeks interpreted them as vowels. The Greeks also interpreted the aleph and the ayin as the vowels they most often carried rather than as the consonants Semitic speakers think of them as. Indo-European speakers tend not to even hear closing the throat as a consonant. In that sense, the fully phonetic alphabet appears to have been invented somewhat by accident. Which is convenient for the fact that vowels are much more important to the meaning of Indo-European words.

[Ludicus]

There is no evidence that proto-Elamite dates back as far as proto-cuneiform.

Thanks for your valuable input.

Desset wrote, four years ago,(PDF) Proto-Elamite writing in Iran | Francois Desset ...

In the Near East, the most ancient writing systems currently known in the world appeared at the end of the 4th millennium BC: the proto-cuneiform writing in Southern Mesopotamia and the proto-elamite writing on the Iranian Plateau.
Both used for administrative and accounting purposes, these writing systems displayed important parallels, such as the numerical systems and the numerical value signs, and dissimilarities since most of their signs differed from each other.
Because of the apparent break in the scribal tradition on the Iranian Plateau around 2800 BC, the proto-elamite writing did not give birth to any offspring which could have helped us in its decipherment, contrary to the proto-cuneiform writing and its heir, the cuneiform writing.
For this reason, although it is known for more than one century thanks to the French excavations in Susa, the protoelamite writing remains still largely undeciphered and only the shared elements with the proto-cuneiform writing (such as the numerical systems) are finally well understood. In the mind of the non-specialists, the Near East is usually reduced to (Southern) Mesopotamia. In order to render all the complexity of the historical context which witnessed the invention of writing in the Near East, this paper presents state of the art research on the Iranian Plateau and the important scientific corpus of the proto-elamite tablets.

Would you like to make a comment?

[sumskilz]

Would you like to make a comment?

Regarding this:

In the mind of the non-specialists, the Near East is usually reduced to (Southern) Mesopotamia.

One could easily get the impression that the Elamites were people on the periphery of the Fertile Crescent who harassed the early Mesopotamian civilization, when in fact they were themselves one of the earliest Fertile Crescent civilizations. The Elamite writing systems appear to have been influenced by the Mesopotamian writing system, or possibly just parallel developments that grew out of a similar milieu. When I say that there is no evidence that proto-Elamite dates back as far as proto-cuneiform, I'm talking about a gap of perhaps two centuries for the earliest finds. The systems were still contemporaries in the grand scheme of things. It's not the same situation as when other Fertile Crescent cultures encountered cuneiform already well-developed, at which point it was easier to adapt the system to their own language rather than develop their own.

The modern view of Elam is no doubt colored by the fact that most of what is known of their history comes from from the Mesopotamian perspective, as is evidenced by the fact that we call it by its Akkadian name. There is also a little bit of the same issue that effects perceptions of the region I work in. From the Neolithic through the Iron Age, Canaan was one of the most technologically advanced places on Earth, but it's sort of looked at as a backwater because it's right next to Egypt.

[Cyclops]

Well done Desset, it'd be interesting to see what the similarities between the numeric systems of Elam and Sumer were. It might speak to some sort of exchange at the non-scribal level.

So proto-Elamite writing was up and rolling, went linear, got wiped somehow (which might take only a couple of schools being razed I guess?) and when they needed writing again they went west and adapted cuneiform. Not entirely unfamiliar, our proto-Hellenic/Hellenic friends went through something a little similar.

My memory of that region are pretty hazy, Elamite is a weird one-off language like Sumerian isn't it? Not sure if having a non-Semitic/non Sumerian language to write played a role in developing a unique system. I guess it didn't stop the Akkadians from adopting Sumerian writing so prolly not.

[Ludicus]

The systems were still contemporaries in the grand scheme of things.

Many thanks, Sumskilz.
Is it correct to say that proto-Elamite,dating to the Uruk V period/dating to earliest proto-cuneiform texts from the Uruk IVb period, is an entirely separate writing system, and no contact between the two writing systems can be detected after the Uruk IVa period?

[sumskilz]

Well done Desset, it'd be interesting to see what the similarities between the numeric systems of Elam and Sumer were. It might speak to some sort of exchange at the non-scribal level.

The numbering system was pretty much the same – sexagesimal. Even some of the symbols were the same or similar. There definitely was a lot of trade. The Karun River in western Elam is navigable and flows into the Tigris about 200 kilometers downstream from Awan and Susa, although back then it would have flowed directly into the Persian Gulf not far away from Lagash.

So proto-Elamite writing was up and rolling, went linear, got wiped somehow (which might take only a couple of schools being razed I guess?) and when they needed writing again they went west and adapted cuneiform. Not entirely unfamiliar, our proto-Hellenic/Hellenic friends went through something a little similar.

The oldest known Elamite cuneiform text (c. 2250 BCE) is a treaty which made the Elamite king Hita a vassal of Naram-Sin of Akkad. Naram-Sin claimed to have conquered almost all of Elam. Then in the next century, the Akkadian Empire fell apart, and Elam became independent again, but now many of the Elamite kings had Akkadian names. Presumably because they were former Akkadian governors, Akkadianized local elites, and/or the offspring of intermarriages between the Akkadian royal family and various local rulers (for which there is some evidence). Around 2100 BCE, Puzur-Inshushinak, an Elamite, unified the entire region and expanded beyond, but this was short lived, and Elam thereafter fell more and more under the control of the Sumerians until c. 2030 BCE.

It appears that over the course of this period I’ve just described, Linear Elamite largely fell out of use and was replaced by cuneiform in day-to-day transactions and correspondence, while Linear Elamite was retained only for certain uses. This would explain why most of the Linear Elamite texts that have been found are inscriptions. Now that it can be translated, this hypothesis can probably be tested.

Something similar happened when the Paleo-Hebrew script was replaced by the Aramaic script, at which point Paleo-Hebrew was only used for writing the tetragrammaton – YHWH. It was latter temporarily revived and used on coins minted by the rebels during the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

My memory of that region are pretty hazy, Elamite is a weird one-off language like Sumerian isn't it? Not sure if having a non-Semitic/non Sumerian language to write played a role in developing a unique system. I guess it didn't stop the Akkadians from adopting Sumerian writing so prolly not.

Yeah, Elamite is an isolate. A relationship to the Dravidian languages has been suggested by a few linguists.

Akkadian is a Semitic language, but it has a Sumerian and/or Sumerian-like substrate. For example, its sentence structure is subject-object-verb like Sumerian rather than the typical Semitic verb-subject-object and it dropped the guttural Semitic consonants not present in Sumerian. This is consistent with Akkadian being the result of a Semitic speaking people having established themselves as a ruling class over a population speaking Sumerian or related language. Modern Assyrian Aramaic has an Akkadian substrate, and its guttural consonants are much less pronounced (almost like modern Hebrew) compared to western Aramaic dialects which have consonants more like Arabic. That aside, cuneiform was also adapted to Hittite and Elamite which were unrelated languages without any Sumerian substrate.

The big widespread language families are relatively recent phenomena. At the beginning of the Holocene, the language map would have been much more coarse. This is paralleled in population genetics. Just prior to the Neolithic, the hunter-gathers in the Levant were about as genetically distinct from the hunter-gatherers in the Zagros Mountains as modern Western Europeans are from modern East Asians. Post-Neolithic population movements resulted in significant homogenization.

Is it correct to say that proto-Elamite, dating to the Uruk V period/dating to earliest proto-cuneiform texts from the Uruk IVb period, is an entirely separate writing system, and no contact between the two writing systems can be detected after the Uruk IVa period?

I think it’s hard to say for certain, but there was contact between the two cultures and both systems evolved in a similar direction, from logographic to syllabic. So we might assume there was at least some influence, but since there wasn’t any character borrowing, there is no way to say for certain, at least with the current state of knowledge. If Proto-Elamite was better understood, it would probably be easier to say. Desset's forthcoming publication may have something to say on that. Strictly speaking, there is no evidence of further influence, only reasonable speculation.

[Cyclops]

The numbering system was pretty much the same – sexagesimal....

Be good to see overlaid maths systems (sexi-, deci- etc), as well as muthoi (sun is a bird vs sun is a wheel, creatrix/or, world out of water/fire/nothing/chaos, those sort of elements), with the various political, language and economic/environmental maps. I wonder what sort of patterns might emerge. I have a theory about pastoral/sun/patriarchies vs wet agriculturalists in north-south oriented river systems that's most likely garbage. I like those maps that show vine and olive cultivation which match quite a bit of the Roman Empire's borders.

...

Yeah, Elamite is an isolate. A relationship to the Dravidian languages has been suggested by a few linguists...

Is Dravidian the "east-of-the-Euphrates-too-hard-basket" like Finno-Ugric is for Europe?

...
The big widespread language families are relatively recent phenomena. At the beginning of the Holocene, the language map would have been much more coarse. This is paralleled in population genetics. Just prior to the Neolithic, the hunter-gathers in the Levant were about as genetically distinct from the hunter-gatherers in the Zagros Mountains as modern Western Europeans are from modern East Asians. Post-Neolithic population movements resulted in significant homogenization. ...

[baseless notions of purity and autochthony intensify]...of course my Irish ancestors are a special case...LOL.

Seeing how easy it was for enormously complex language & culture maps in Australia to be scraped almost clean like a slate in less than two centuries this doesn't surprise me. I think Australian aboriginal genetic maps would show similar complexity, but they've been muddied by European genetic mixing and forced internment.

I wonder about breeding vs warfare components and proportions in language and writing system use and change, not to mention utility, cultural status and special statuses like cultic status (the Tetragrammaton just jumps out there as intensely as Mahammad wrestling the angel or the tongues of fire at Pentecost, something memorable happened and is remembered to this day).

[athanaric]

You mean Finno-Ugric. Uighur is Turkic.

[Cyclops]

You mean Finno-Ugric. Uighur is Turkic.

...yeah well can you explain how Finland has a city called Turku then?

Thx mate, corrected the meme but not the box tag. I'd like to blame autocorrect but it was just plain ignorance on my part.

[jpz79]

Regarding this:

One could easily get the impression that the Elamites were people on the periphery of the Fertile Crescent who harassed the early Mesopotamian civilization, when in fact they were themselves one of the earliest Fertile Crescent civilizations. The Elamite writing systems appear to have been influenced by the Mesopotamian writing system, or possibly just parallel developments that grew out of a similar milieu. When I say that there is no evidence that proto-Elamite dates back as far as proto-cuneiform, I'm talking about a gap of perhaps two centuries for the earliest finds. The systems were still contemporaries in the grand scheme of things. It's not the same situation as when other Fertile Crescent cultures encountered cuneiform already well-developed, at which point it was easier to adapt the system to their own language rather than develop their own.

The modern view of Elam is no doubt colored by the fact that most of what is known of their history comes from from the Mesopotamian perspective, as is evidenced by the fact that we call it by its Akkadian name. There is also a little bit of the same issue that effects perceptions of the region I work in. From the Neolithic through the Iron Age, Canaan was one of the most technologically advanced places on Earth, but it's sort of looked at as a backwater because it's right next to Egypt.

Well, unless we uncover every single artifact from the 3rd Millenium, then it's not possible to make any definitive conclusion as to the origin of writing. But it is reasonable to say, based on sample dating that is available, proto-Cunieform and proto-Elamite were, at least, contemporary. And it certainly is possible that proto-Elamite predates proto-cuneiform. And Desset did show, based on his deciphering of Linear Elamite, that it was an evolution of the older Proto-Elamite.

The talk about proto-Elamite pre-dating cuneiform is a silly distraction from Desset's accomplishment. As a system, it's linear Elamite (c. 2300 BCE) that is analogous to cuneiform (c. 3200 BCE). There is no evidence that proto-Elamite dates back as far as proto-cuneiform.

Actually, it's not quite baseless. It has long been established that Proto-Elamite tablets date to the time of Proto-Cuneiform (+- ~100 years). And by deciphering Linear Elamite, it's possible to determine that it was directly derived by the much older Proto-Elamite language.

[sumskilz]

Well, unless we uncover every single artifact from the 3rd Millenium, then it's not possible to make any definitive conclusion as to the origin of writing. But it is reasonable to say, based on sample dating that is available, proto-Cunieform and proto-Elamite were, at least, contemporary. And it certainly is possible that proto-Elamite predates proto-cuneiform. And Desset did show, based on his deciphering of Linear Elamite, that it was an evolution of the older Proto-Elamite.

Actually, it's not quite baseless. It has long been established that Proto-Elamite tablets date to the time of Proto-Cuneiform (+- ~100 years). And by deciphering Linear Elamite, it's possible to determine that it was directly derived by the much older Proto-Elamite language.

I said there is no evidence. Speculation about what could be found if every single artifact from the 3rd Millennium were uncovered isn't evidence. How are you arriving at that date? The earlier Proto-Cuneiform tablets are from Uruk IV circa 3500–3250 BCE. As far as I know, the earliest Proto-Elamite tablets are from Susa III circa 3100–2850 BCE. See page 63 here for the most recent C-14 results from Uruk IV.

EDIT: There was also the claim that Proto-Elamite dated back to 3300 BCE in the article that Ludicus posted, so I looked into it further. Three Proto-Elamite tablets were found in a context at Tal-i Malyan for which C-14 results give a date range of 3300-3050 BCE. The Kish tablet from Uruk IV was found under a collapsed roof with beams that have been C-14 dated to a range of 3515-3390 BCE. Desset has argued that the two writing systems arose at the same time because the beams of the roof could have been made of old wood. They could have, but this is still a stretch because there are a lot of Proto-Cuneiform tablets from Uruk IV where the youngest C-14 result from any artifact is 3290-3245 BCE, indicating that a period in which Proto-Cuneiform was already in significant use ended slightly after the earliest possible date for these Proto-Elamite tablets. Furthermore, sample UGAMS 12443 from the Anu Ziggerat had a C-14 result of 3517-3358 BCE corroborating the earlier beginning of the phase. To be fair, when Desset made this argument he wouldn't have known about the additional C-14 results from Uruk IV which strengthened its earlier dating.

In summary:

The earliest phase containing Proto-Cuneiform tablets has C-14 results ranging from 3517-3245 BCE.

The earliest phase containing Proto-Elamite tablets has C-14 results ranging from 3300-3050 BCE.