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Flashback
The Evolution of Writing
Between the fourth and second millennium B.C., the first authentic systems of writing appeared in Egypt, Mesopotamia and, a little later, in China. Many other ideographic scripts were invented, such as Hittite writing, Cretan, and various derivations of Sumerian cuneiform. The real revolution of writing was to come, however, with the adoption of a purely phonetic principle: the alphabet. The alphabet appeared around the mid-second millennium B.C. and after a few centuries had spread throughout the Middle East. Between the tenth and ninth centuries BC, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their language and re-utilized some of the guttural signs to form vowels. As a result, the written text became more faithful to the sound of the words and therefore easier to read. The archaic Greek alphabet then passed on to the Etruscans, and from them to the Latins. The Latin form of the alphabet is the one we use today, and its great success was due to the Roman Empire which spread it through most of Europe. Aramaic, another Semitic language, had meanwhile become the lingua franca of a vast area extending from Palestine to the Indus valley.

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