this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Linguistics

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Evidence of oldest known alphabetic writing unearthed in ancient Syrian city (hub.jhu.edu)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Archive link: https://archive.ph/cIz4A

It's dated to be from around 2400 BCE. The article doesn't clarify if it's a true alphabet or an abjad, but either way it's interesting.

EDIT: see also https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-oldest-alphabet-discovered/ for a less pop-linguistics narrative of the same discovery.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This press release is pretty crap, but there is more info here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-oldest-alphabet-discovered/

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm going to add this to the OP, thanks for sharing it!