The origin of writing is lost in history and the system used today by most western countries is the result of numerous metamorphoses over time. Everything indicates that its oldest version appeared in Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), between the years 1400 and 1000 BC This ancestral alphabet would have been inspired by hieroglyphs, the Egyptian writing in which ideas were represented by drawings but which, possibly, also used signs. for syllables. The Phoenicians, however, dispensed with the hieroglyphic icons, preserving the symbols only for the sounds, an important innovation adopted later by the Greeks, whose alphabet used similar signs in the same order. In the eighth century BC, this system was assimilated and slightly modified by the Etruscans, people who lived in northern Italy – and soon borrowed by neighboring Romans, who practically defined the letters as they are used today.
Phoenician – circa 900 BC
ANCIENT GREEK – circa 750 BC
ETRUSK – circa 650 BC
ROMAN – circa 500 BC
Read too:
– Who decided the order of the letters in the alphabet?
– What is phonetic alphabet?
– Who created the language for the deaf?