The document discusses several early forms of communication before the development of writing systems, including: - Marshack's claim that prehistoric artifacts were used as early communication media to record and share information, indicating a "cultural revolution". - Innis' argument that different ancient civilizations adopted different communication mediums like stone or papyrus depending on whether information needed to be durable over long periods of time or portable over large distances. - Robinson's view that various early writing systems evolved from pictograms and borrowed elements from each other, using mixtures of phonetic and semantic signs, rather than all developing completely independently.