Writing systems typically satisfy three criteria. Firstly, the writing must have some purpose or meaning to it, and a point must be communicated by … See more

During the Bronze Age, writing emerged as Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, the Indus script, and Olmec hieroglyphs. … See more

With the collapse of the Roman authority in Western Europe, literacy development became largely confined to the Eastern Roman Empire See more

There is no very definite statement as to the material which was in most common use for the purposes of writing at the start of the early writing … See more

The origins of writing are more generally attributed to the start of the pottery-phase of the Neolithic, when clay tokens were used to record … See more

Before the 20th century, most scholarly theories as to how writing was invented promoted forms of "monogenesis", assuming that writing … See more

The Phoenician alphabet is continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet into the Iron Age, conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BCE. This alphabet gave rise to the Aramaic and Greek alphabets. These in turn led to the writing systems used throughout … See more