There's a thread on r/Truefilm right now about Siskel & Ebert's thumbs up/thumbs down rating system, in which someone claims that numerical ratings (e.g. out of five stars) stretched back decades before. But how far? Do we know where and why this practice began? Was it with the movies, or some other form of cultural reporting?
You could argue it began in Ancient Rome.
Now they give shows of their own. Thumbs up! Thumbs down! And the killers, spare or slay, and then go back to concessions for private privies.
— Juvenal, Against the City of Rome (c. 110–127 A.D.)
That was likely not the first form of cultural commentary, as it were, but it is widely held to be the first time that the fate of a performance was decided, literally, by a binary gesture.