Here is some history of ancient art of writing: It clearly shows ancient people used pictures of art to write & communicate with others.
Source: Wikipedia

Middle Babylonian legal tablet from Alalah in its envelope

History of writing
The history of writing follows the art of expressing words by
letters or other marks. In the history of how systems of representation
of language through graphic means have evolved in different human
civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by
proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbol.
Language expresses thought, preserves thought, and also suggests or
creates thought. It has been considered obvious that, so long as
language is unwritten, it can accomplish these ends only in a very
imperfect measure. Hence it may well be supposed that, at a very early
stage of man's history, attempts were made to present in some way to
the eye the thought which spoken language conveyed to the ear, and thus
give it visible form and permanence. However, this understanding does
not necessarily go unquestioned. True writing, or phonetic writing,
records were developed independently in four different civilizations in
the world, namely Sumeria, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica.

Selection of Vinča symbols (in Gimbutas font)

Writing Systems
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic
communication systems in that one must usually understand something of
the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. By contrast,
other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting,
maps, and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken
language. Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded
by many as an innate and defining condition of mankind (see Origin of
language). However the development of writing systems, and the process
by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication
has been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems
on the whole change more slowly than their spoken counterparts, and
often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in
the spoken language. The great benefit of writing systems is their
ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a
language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of
formulation.

The Tărtăria tablets, subject of considerable controversy among
archaeologists by representing an early form of writing in the world


Literature & Writing
Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous.
The very first writings from ancient Sumer by any reasonable definition
do not constitute literature — the same is true of some of the early
Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese
regimes. The history of literature begins with the history of writing
and the notion of "literature" has different meanings depending on who
is using it. Scholars have disagreed concerning when written
record-keeping became more like "literature" than anything else and is
largely subjective. It could be applied broadly to mean any symbolic
record, encompassing everything from images and sculptures to letters.
The oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full
millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium
BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and
Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively.
In the early literate societies, as much as 600 years passed from the
first inscriptions to the first coherent textual sources (ca. 3200 to
2600 BC).

The Dispilio tablet markings (charagmata) dated around the final Middle Neolithic stage

Europe and Near East
The Vinča signs show an evolution of simple symbols beginning in the
7th millennium, gradually increasing in complexity throughout the 6th
millennium and culminating in the Tărtăria tablets of ca. 5300 BC[8]
with their rows of symbols carefully aligned, evoking the impression of
a "text". The "Slavic runes" mentioned by a few medieval authors may
also have been a system of proto-writing. The Quipu of the Incas
(sometimes called "talking knots") may have been of a similar nature. A
historical example is the system of pictographs invented by Uyaquk
before the developed of the Yugtun syllabary.

The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium is similar. The
hieroglyphic scripts of the Ancient Near East (Egyptian, Sumerian
proto-Cuneiform and Cretan) seamlessly emerge from such symbol systems,
so that it is difficult to say at what point precisely writing emerges
from proto-writing. Adding to this difficulty is the fact that very
little is known about the symbols' meanings.

Example of the Jiahu symbols, a writing-like markings, found on tortoise shells were dated around 6000 BC.

Sequence of ten Indus signs discovered near the northern gate of the Indus site Dholavira

India and Asia
The 4th to 3rd millennium BC Indus script may similarly constitute
proto-writing, possibly already influenced by the emergence of writing
in Mesopotamia.

In 2003, tortoise shells were discovered in China, which had Jiahu
Script carved into them. These shells were determined as dating back to
the 6th millennium BC, via radiocarbon dating. The shells were found
buried with human remains, in 24 Neolithic graves unearthed at Jiahu,
Henan province, northern China. According to some archaeologists, the
writing on the shells had similarities to the 2nd millennium BC Oracle
bone script.[10] Others, however, have dismissed this claim as
insufficiently substantiated, claiming that simple geometric designs
such as those found on the Jiahu Shells, cannot be linked to early
writing.

Sumerian 26th cAdab


Bronze Age Writing
Writing emerged in a variety of different cultures in the Bronze age.
In the hieroglyphic, it is found that the point of meeting between the
two great classes of written characters, the ideographic and phonetic,
and, as it seems, there has been some light thrown on their mutual
relation, and the manner in which the one arose, or, at least, may have
arisen, out of the other. It has been affirmed, indeed, that the two
kinds of writing are so entirely distinct that it is impossible to
entertain the idea of a historical relationship between them. But the
fact is, that in the hieroglyphic that such a relationship is already
established. No nation which had made any considerable advance towards
civilization remained satisfied with a pictorial or symbolic writing,
more particularly if it be disposed to cultivate to any extent
intercourse with other nations. To represent by means of such a method
of writing foreign words and names is a matter of the utmost
difficulty; and it is not improbable that the origin of the phonetic
writing may be traced to the intercourse of nations speaking different
languages. Thus compelled to employ ideographic characters phonetically
in writing foreign words.

From this, there is but a step to the discovery of an alphabet, viz.
the employment of the same sign to represent not the combination of
sounds forming the word, but the initial sound. It is true such
correspondence cannot be traced through the whole of the phonetic
alphabet. But when considering how very imperfect is the knowledge
which even the most distinguished scholars possess of the ancient
language, it is fully warranted in putting aside this negative
evidence, and receiving the hypothesis just mentioned (such as that of
Champollion with the ancient Egyptian language), as furnishing a very
probable explanation of the origin of what may be called the alphabet.

The Ge'ez writing system of Ethiopia is considered Semitic. It is
likely to be of semi-independent origin, having roots in the Meroitic
Sudanese ideogram system. The Chinese script likely developed
independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around 1600 BC. The
pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others
Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had
independent origins. It is thought that the first true alphabetic
writing appeared around 2000 BC, as a representation of language
developed for Semitic slaves in Egypt by Egyptians (see History of the
alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world today either descended
from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were
directly inspired by its design. In the case of Italy, about 500 years
passed from the early Old Italic alphabet to Plautus (750 to 250 BC),
and in the case of the Germanic peoples, the corresponding time span is
again similar, from the first Elder Futhark inscriptions to early texts
like the Abrogans (ca. 200 to 750 CE).