When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. An alphabetic inscription written on a jar fragment found at the site of Tel Lachish in Israel ...

What appears to be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history is etched onto finger-length, clay cylinders excavated from a tomb in Syria by a team of Johns Hopkins University ...

A, B, C, D, E, F, G—makes you want to hum the alphabet song. But there’s no real reason why people should learn these letters in this order. There are plenty of ...

Every writing system in history followed the same hidden trajectory, shedding thousands of symbols down to a handful of sounds. This is the story of how that compression happened, and why the alphabet ...

In 2010, archaeologist Glenn Schwartz quietly suggested that the history of writing needs, well, rewriting. More than a decade later, he still thinks he's on to something. If he's right, the world's ...

The early history of the alphabet may require rewriting. Four clay artefacts found at an ancient site in Syria are incised with what is potentially the earliest alphabetic writing ever found. The ...