# First person whose name we know **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 25, 2015, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821 "2015-08-25T12:29:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/1 "2015-08-25T12:29:55Z")
I KNOW we’ve discussed this before on this Board, but it showed up on someone’s blog today: [http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/19/whos-the-first-person-in-history-whose-name-we-know/](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/19/whos-the-first-person-in-history-whose-name-we-know/) > [@](#): > > So I trolled the internet, read some books, and to my great surprise—the first name in recorded history isn’t a king. Nor a warrior. Or a poet. He was, it turns out … an accountant. In his new book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari goes back 33 centuries before Christ to a 5,000-year-old clay tablet found in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). It has dots, brackets, and little drawings carved on it and appears to record a business deal. > > Picture of an ancient tablet depicting beer production Inanna Temple in Uruk > MS1717, © The Schøyen Collection, Oslo and London [MS 1717 - The Schoyen Collection](http://www.schoyencollection.com/24-smaller-collections/wine-beer/ms-1717-beer-inanna-uruk) > > It’s a receipt for multiple shipments of barley. The tablet says, very simply: > > 29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim > > “The most probable reading of this sentence,” Harari writes, “is: ‘A total of 29,086 measures of barley were received over the course of 37 months. Signed, Kushim.’ ” I would’ve thought the Egyptian King Scorpion was the first. A quick check on dates puts him about level with Kushim (and Krulwich’s other candidates). I don’t recall who the SDMB nominated earlier, but I’ll bet Scorpion was among them. You can argue that “Scorpion” might have been a nickname or a title, not a real name, but it’s as likely as that Kushim is a name and not a job description, too. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/2 "2015-08-25T12:36:17Z")
Pretty sure it was Fred Flintstone. I mean, he co-existed with dinosaurs and everything. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/3 "2015-08-25T15:39:07Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Pretty sure it was Fred Flintstone. I mean, he co-existed with dinosaurs and everything. Jed Flintstone, Fred’s great-grandfather, is his earliest ancestor we have a name for. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/4 "2015-08-25T17:37:07Z")
So…not Tom Bombadil, then? ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2015, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/5 "2015-08-26T19:32:27Z")
In my case it was “Mama”. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2015, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/6 "2015-08-26T21:29:22Z")
It wasn’t “Handy”, the guy who put his hands all over those cave walls? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2015, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-person-whose-name-we-know/728821/7 "2015-08-27T11:35:43Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > It wasn’t “Handy”, the guy who put his hands all over those cave walls? “Handy” is like “Kilroy” from WWII – he seems to be everywhere because random people keep copying his logo and signature all over the place. It was the Paleolithic Era. Copyright Laws were in a primitive state.