Alphabet

The Alphabet a brief History
Significant things in history that changed learning:

First there was impersonation, people learn how to act from their ZPD.
Literacy comes to mind.

I'm of the oppinion that as far as learning is concerned, literacy is a bigger mile stone than speech.
I wonder how the closely related evolution of the written word and the evolution of the spoken word are?

Written word:
this page: http://www.jaars.org/museum/alphabet/people/begin.htm
Gives a pretty good over view of the evolution of language
But most of my info comes from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphics then to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_alphabet
then to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Canaanite_alphabet then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
alfter that there's the history of the alphabet pages

Basically around in the late 4th millenium BC ish, Sumarians developed Cuniform, apparently from the early shipping records which were pressed into the clay.

oh look there's Babylon: right in the middle of Iraq, spooky!

At the same time The Egyptians were developing hieroglyphics, in the 'game' of reading.

Not a lot really happened until the bronze age was nearly done when the Phoenician Alphabet came out.

There were bits and bobs nearer the middle of the bronze age like:
the Proto-Canaanite alphabet which was the direct predecessor of Phoenicien.
This apparently derived from the Proto-Sinaitic script in Canaan (Palestine) and the Sinai peninsula, most famously from a turquoise-mining area of the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim (serābîţ el-xâdem)
And the Wadi el-Hol script: from further south.


Phoenicien came out around 1400 BC; Phoenicia is on the east coast of the med. Where Lebanon is.


It wasn't until the 9th Century BC when the Greek alphabet became the first true alphabet.
Unlike Phoenician the Greek alphabet had vowels.
The Etruscans somehow adapted the Greek alphabet into Etruscan letters which were later adopted by the Romans for old Latin from the 7th century BC and onwards, possibly a little help from the Cumae alphabet. This was then spread to the rest of Europe.

The plant centre for the 'One God' religions and religious war and conflict is the mother of the written word.

Interesting coincidence. Maybe God looked down and said, "they can nearly write, i'll do it all around there"

Before:


After: