[svcw]

Oh may gosh. I need to start drinking. I thought you were responding to something I wrote about the census and was going to "do a yell at you" for the white rice comment. So I apologize, even though you have know idea what I am talking about and your post made perfect sense. Now I am going to drink something.

[muawiyah]

Yes, drinking ~ there are some reasonably palatable gluten free beers on the market these days ~ drink deep. I may join you this weekend.

I think your topic was about how the alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics ~ and there is a case to be made for that.

It could have readily been derived from Sumerian characters once they'd become a base for a syllabry for Semitic languages.

Well, that, or a combination of that and every other theory ever advanced for the Western alphabet.

At the same time there are "other alphabets" developed elsewhere that seem to have been devised without prior development having taken place ~ done by geniuses I suppose.

Yup, I've been watching the reviews on recent analysis that's been done on Middle Eastern alphabets. Someone has figured out how to rank order these things in terms of "time" and "comprehensiveness".

I'm still back there trying to figure out how stories attributed to "Lot" ended up being drawn under rocky outcrops 7,000 years ago in the Kola. I will probably have to bite the bullet and read through some of the less interesting translations of ancient Sumerian stuff about visiting vast glacial fields in the far North. A lot of that stuff is right off the planet I've heard.