when did people first start creating poetry

People first started creating poetry as part of oral traditions likely predating written language, with the earliest known examples of written poetry dating back to around 2000 to 3000 BCE. The oldest surviving written poems come from ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, where poems were often recited or sung in religious ceremonies and used to remember oral history and genealogies. One of the earliest known epic poems is the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to the 3rd millennium BCE. Poetry originally served multiple purposes including worship, storytelling, preserving cultural narratives, and expressing emotions orally before becoming written texts.