[Mariner]

The more that is discovered about the ancient world the more fascinated I become.

For several hundred thousand years man has been dependent, mostly, on what Grandpa told him.

Only in the last 5-8 thousand years have we been able to write.

And now with modern technology and systematic excavation we are able to learn SO MUCH MORE than our ancestors about our human history.

It's a wonderful time to be alive, literally.

[SunkenCiv]

Writing has been independently invented a number of times, and appears to be so commonplace that it wouldn't be surprising to find that most of the writing systems ever devised have been lost, and probably so long ago even the folklore (or possibly just the population that used it) has vanished.

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.