You’ve Got Mail: 81 Of The Most Creative And Cool Mailboxes Spotted In The Wild

If you were to imagine the very first letters ever written, what would they look like? If you pictured pieces of paper scrawled with curly handwriting, you'd be wrong. The world's first "letters" came in the shape of clay tokens. They were bobs of baked clay with dots or lines incised in them. Used in Mesopotamia some 9,500 years ago, these tokens during trade.

"A courier might bring tokens to a seller for so many bushels of grain, or so many jars of olive oil, and the seller would send the tokens with the goods back to the buyer. Think of it as a Bronze Age bill of lading," explains the ThoughtCo. site.

This would mark the start of writing, and the very early days of what would later become the postal system.

State-sponsored, designated couriers started emerging in Egypt around 2400 BCE. This is believed to be the first documented use of an official postal system, and at the time, it was only available to pharaohs.

"The main mode of transportation was through the Nile River," reports Egyptian Streets. "The letters were placed in a box escorted by guards." The pharaohs would use this method to communicate with each other and send updates on political developments in their territories.

Around 305 B.C., the postal service got a little makeover in the form of a new method of transportation: horses. Believe it or not, this marked the earliest documentation of what is now known as “express mail” and “regular mail.”

"The express mail services were exclusive to state officials and rulers while the latter was used by the wider public and was delivered by a postman on a donkey or mule," reveals Egyptian Streets.

According to ThoughtCo., the first envelopes were made of cloth, animal skins or vegetable parts. Paper envelopes were later developed in China, and were known as chih poh.

Many years later, in 1653, a Frenchman called Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer brought us the world's first mailbox in Paris. He sold pre-paid envelopes and set up mailboxes around the city. He's deliver any letters placed in them, provided they were in bought envelopes.

Unfortunately, De Valayer's business did not last long. It reportedly came to an abrupt end after someone put live mice in the mailboxes, completely freaking out his customers.

William Dockwra is credited with setting up the Penny Post in 1680. "Striking features of the scheme were that letters were prepaid and stamped to indicate place of posting and the time they had been sent out for delivery," reports Britannica. "Deliveries were made almost hourly."

Again, it didn't last... Dockwra ended up being prosecuted for infringing the state monopoly. The Penny Post was shut down in November 1682, and reopened by the government a short while later.

Then, in 1759, a similar thing happened in Paris. Claude-Humbert Piarron de Chamousset came up with a local postal service but the government wasn't happy. His business was absorbed by the state postal system, but the Frenchman was paid compensation.