Writing is a very recent invention, about 5-6kya for the oldest known script, and effectively one of the last inventions of the Neolithic package. We see urban developments that well predate writing; Catalhoyuk is something like 10kya, and that is roughly contemporary with the earliest domestication of crops and animals.
Even full on state-based civilization can happen in the absence of writing systems--Teotihuacan rather famously was not a literate society, even going so far as to exert hegemony over literate Mayan city-states and still not adopt any writing or proto-writing system. (There are also societies like the Wari and the Inca, which had quipu, themselves something that make you ask "what is a writing system?").
Writing is a very recent invention, about 5-6kya for the oldest known script, and effectively one of the last inventions of the Neolithic package. We see urban developments that well predate writing; Catalhoyuk is something like 10kya, and that is roughly contemporary with the earliest domestication of crops and animals.
Even full on state-based civilization can happen in the absence of writing systems--Teotihuacan rather famously was not a literate society, even going so far as to exert hegemony over literate Mayan city-states and still not adopt any writing or proto-writing system. (There are also societies like the Wari and the Inca, which had quipu, themselves something that make you ask "what is a writing system?").