In 2010, archaeologist Glenn Schwartz quietly suggested that the history of writing needs, well, rewriting. More than a decade later, he still thinks he's on to something. If he's right, the world's ...

SANTA CRUZ — While a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, UC Santa Cruz history professor Elaine Sullivan unearthed ancient artifacts in Syria marked with an alphabetic script whose meaning ...

The earliest known example of alphabetic writing has been discovered etched onto small clay cylinders in an ancient Syrian tomb, which was excavated by researchers from Maryland’s Johns Hopkins ...

Just outside the Syrian city of Aleppo, archaeologists have discovered what may be the oldest example of alphabetic writing ever found. Ahmad Sofi via Unsplash UPDATE: This story has been updated to ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. An alphabetic inscription written on a jar fragment found at the site of Tel Lachish in Israel ...

Excavations at Umm el-Marra, a Bronze Age city in northern Syria, have revealed finger-sized clay cylinders with inscriptions that experts now believe may represent the earliest known alphabetic ...

The Greek alphabet, traditionally believed to have emerged in the eighth century BC, is now undergoing reevaluation thanks to groundbreaking research at Leiden University. The writing system is ...

Most of the world’s languages are written alphabetically; in an alphabetic writing system the basic components represent sounds only without any reference to meaning. For example, the letter “b” in ...

Neo-Platonist philosophers also saw in it a form of writing that functioned in a symbolic mode, disconnected from any linguistic realization. Moreover, at the time, there was little distinction ...