Main article: Old Tamil language Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 5th century BCE to th e 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from between the 5th and 2nd century BCE in caves and on pottery. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi.[59] The earli est long text in Old Tamil is the Tolkappiyam, an early work on Tamil grammar an d poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the 1st century BC.[51] A larg e number of literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corp us of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature. These poems are usual ly dated to between the 1st and 5th centuries AD,[51] Middle Tamil Main article: Middle Tamil language Thanjavur Tamil Inscription The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil which is generally taken to have be en completed by the 8th century,[51] was characterized by a number of phonologic al and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts wer e the virtual disappearance of the aytam (?), an old phoneme,[60] the coalescenc e of the alveolar and dental nasals,[61] and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic.[62] In grammar, the most important change was the emergen ce of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil (????), m eaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an a spect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non -lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ? (??). In Middle Ta mil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker ki??a (?????) which combined the old aspect and time markers.[63]