The A to Z of Alphabet Origins and the Most Ancient Written Languages

Writing is traditionally regarded as one of the requirements for a society to be considered as a civilization. Various writing systems have been invented by the great civilizations of the world, one of which is known as alphabetic writing. This type of writing is characterised by a standard set of letters, each of which represent a basic significant sound (known as a phoneme) of the spoken language. Examples of alphabetic writing systems include the Latin alphabet, the Arabic alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet.

Before the Alphabet

As the alphabet plays such an important role in our world today, one might expect that this writing system has existed since the dawn of civilization. This, however, is not the case. To illustrate this point, in Mesopotamia, which is considered to be the oldest civilization in the world, a writing system known as the cuneiform script was invented by the Sumerians towards the end of the 4^th millennium BC. By comparison, the history of the alphabet can only be traced to the 2^nd millennium B.C., which places it around a millennium after the invention of the cuneiform script.

Cuneiform inscription on a temple door. (CC BY-SA 4.0)