Comment by thaumasiotes

> As far as anybody can tell, mathematics is way older than literature.

That depends what you mean by "literature". If you want it to be written down, then it's very recent because writing is very recent.

But it would be normal to consider cultural products to be literature regardless of whether they're written down. Writing is a medium of transmission. You wouldn't study the epic of Gilgamesh because it's written down. You study it to see what the Sumerians thought about the topics it covers, or to see which god some iconography that you found represents, or... anything that it might plausibly tell you. But the fact that it was written down is only the reason you can study it, not the reason you want to.