Posted on 11/21/2024 2:19:40 PM PST by george76
For decades, it's been a common belief that the Ancient Egyptians were responsible for the very first alphabet.
Now, a shocking finding challenges this assumption, pushing back the age of the first known alphabetic writing by about 500 years.
...
The finger-length cylinders were found at Tell Umm-el Marra, a former city located in today's northwestern Syria, once a bustling crossroads for two trade routes.
Carbon dating techniques reveal that the objects date back 4,400 years to 2400 BC – preceding any other known alphabetic scripts by roughly 500 years.
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However, the academic admits he 'can only speculate' exactly what the writing says.
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Before the alphabet, humans relied on hieroglyphics, according to Professor Schwartz, who found the cylinders in 2004.
'Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated,' he said.
'This new discovery shows people were experimenting with new communication technologies much earlier and in a different location than we had imagined.'
With colleagues from the University of Amsterdam, the professor co-directed a 16-year-long archaeological dig at Tell Umm-el Marra, one of the ancient Near East's oldest cities, located on a crossroads of two trade routes.
At Umm-el Marra, the archaeologists uncovered tombs dating back to the Early Bronze Age – a period stretching from about 3500 to 2000 BC.
One of the best-preserved tombs contained six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry, cookware, a spearhead and intact pottery vessels.
Next to the pottery was four of the 'lightly baked' clay cylinders or tubes with what seemed to be alphabetic writing on top.
Now, the researchers have used carbon-14 dating, a scientific method that can accurately determine the age of organic materials as old as 60,000 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE
Kilroy Was Here!
Bonk
“For decades, it’s been a common belief that the Ancient Egyptians were responsible for the very first alphabet. “
Pure BS. Must be a woke education...
Gilgamesh was a pansy! Istar’s rites are female rights!!!
A Catholic priest I know who spent many years in Lebanon was also a linguist (knew 15 languages, from Arabic and Hindi through Quecua, Gaelic, Hebre and Esperanto. He said Mass in Latin.) told me that the Syrians believe their version of Aramaic was the original language(the one that Adam and Eve spoke). He chuckled lightly as he recounted it.
fascinating
six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry,
I wish they had shown some of that as well.
Free Beer Tomorrow
Before there was Ovaltine there was Maypo.
The alphabet was a very important invention, but the earlier versions (consonants only) were more like memory aids. The Greek invention of vowels greatly improved the alphabet as a way of expressing one's thoughts.
Usually the Canaanites/Phoenicians are credited with inventing the alphabet, but some of their symbols may have been taken from Egyptian characters.
Tell Umm el-Marra, Syria, Early Bronze Age Results: Final Excavation Report
Agreed.
Pictographs are not alphabets.
Mesopotamia was before those. And the Indus Valley Harappan Script was before them.
I’m glad they use the “BC” time scale.
Also, I don’t think we’ll ever see recorded (written) history earlier than the Biblical time scale.
“Pictographs are not alphabets.”
I’m not talking about pictographs.
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