For a full list of BASHing data blog posts see the index page. I knew that data tables had been around a long time, but I didn't appreciate how long until I read recently about account-keeping in ancient Mesopotamia. The accounts were written on clay tablets, sometimes with impressed lines to mark off rows and columns. Here's a drawing of the front and back sides of an example: This tablet was found on the site of the old city of Larsa near the mouth of the Euphrates in Iraq. Someone wrote on th...