Transmission of the European Alphabet
At a glance:
- Series: Great Events from History: The Ancient World, Prehistory-476
- Categories: Language, Linguistics, Philology
- Subcategories: Communications
- Curriculum: Western Civilization/European History, Ancient History
- Geographical Location: Italy, Greece, Syria, Lebanon
- Date: c. 1250
Article abstract: The development of an alphabet that could be used regardless of the language it represented constituted a major advance over hieroglyphs and pictograms, greatly affecting the preservation of knowledge throughout the world.
Summary of Event
The earliest form of writing was the pictogram. Probably around the beginning of the second millennium b.c.e., the earliest form of what became the Roman alphabet was developed by Semitic peoples of unknown identity.
A cuneiform alphabet of about thirty characters used in writing on clay...
[The entire page is 1764 words long]
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