Archaeological data from the ancient Middle East shows a unique, uninterrupted sequence of communication/data storage devices starting ca. 12,000 B.C. This evidence suggests that, in that part of the world, data processing evolved in three main stages, each corresponding to major socioeconomic changes: notched bones (keeping track of lunar notations?) were used by hunting and gathering societies; tokens, recording quantities of goods, followed the domestication of plants and animals; finally, writing coincided with state formation. Each device dealt with data in greater abstraction.