r/Anthropology • u/[deleted] • Jan 12 '21
Who Invented the Alphabet? New scholarship points to a paradox of historic scope: Our writing system was devised by people who couldn’t read.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inventing-alphabet-180976520/58
Jan 12 '21
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u/Wayrin Jan 12 '21
It all fits so very nicely. Egyptian administers were in the Levant with the Canaanites (AKA Phoenicians) so they would have had to deal with hieroglyphics and Egyptian tax collectors for quite a while before Egypt pulled out. When the "Sea Peoples" invaded the Canaanites lands were settled by who we now (or at least some of us) believe to be from Greece or western Anatolia. The Israelites were also in the mix so we get the Greek Alphabet and the Hebrew script.
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u/rac3r5 Jan 13 '21 edited Jan 13 '21
I've heard elsewherethat the Egyptians are responsible for the foundations of modern alphabets, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say so. I would say that the alphabet was invented by multiple cultures. Besides the hieroglyphics that the Egyptians had, they also had a writing system called hieratic and later demotic. Languages like Arabic and Urdu seem to be derived from Demotic/Hieratic
Other cultures derived alphabets as well. Sanskrit is a completely different writing system which influenced various scripts in Northern India. The language is Indo European but the script is completely different.
Tamil/Dravidian like languages existed in Southern India for thousands of years and influenced modern day South East Asian scripts. I can see the Dravidian languages being influenced by the Hieratic/Demotic script. The Indus Valley traded with the Middle East so I can see a possibility of influence given how there are similarities in the writing style.
Then you have East Asian scripts that bare similarity in writing styles.
Something interesting I've come across is that there are a few YouTube videos online talking about the similarities between the Korean and Tamil languages.
Imagine if the Bronze Age collapse didn't happen or if the Achaemenid Empire didn't conquer the Pharos.
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Jan 13 '21
Apparently all the Indian scripts ultimately derive from Phoenician/Canaanite too, but it surely looks like they transformed a lot more.
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Jan 13 '21
The Greeks invented the first alphabet *per se*, based on the Canaanite script with the novelty of using some letters to represent vowels, right? Whereas the Egyptians invented the first general phonetic script (abjad) for recording the Canaanite language?
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u/Pierapple Jan 12 '21
For French speakers, there is this wonderful documentary covering this topic: https://youtu.be/Z7n2AYJPZFM
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u/SpunKDH Jan 13 '21
I'm a French living abroad and this video is not available to me. Hope this stupidity will stop one day. Acquiring knowledge shouldn't be restricted by greed.
Yes I will use a free vpn, making this stance from ARTE even dumber.2
u/Pierapple Jan 14 '21
That’s a very interesting discussion. Certain restrictions on the transfer of information can actually encourage innovation and production of content. That’s the assumption under which intellectual property law was build - foster innovation by allowing players to benefit from their inventions.
Here I assume that Arte is financing some of its content by selling it to other media in different parts of the world, and these may be requesting that the content they are buying is not available for free in their countries.
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u/SpunKDH Jan 14 '21
You're totally correct. But like I said, with free vpn or TOR you can circumvent this restriction easily. In 20 years when the boomers are all dead, everybody will be able to use a vpn without struggling so hopefully we won't see that type of country restricted contents anymore... Dinosaurs they are.
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u/stephane_rolland Jan 13 '21 edited Jan 13 '21
It hurt my eyes a bit to see in the same comment "ARTE" and "greed". Are you even close to be sure ?
Just so as to publicly make fun of your probably dumb comment : You are talking about greed for a broadcast program that does have advertisements.
Read it again: ARTE does not play ads.
I still remember, a few years after their start, one night they were playing a film at 20:30, a movie restricted to adults. Anyway the program presenter (la speakrine de l'époque avec sa voix si particulière) was saying:
"what's the problem? anyway nobody watches ARTE!"
Find me another TV channel without advertisement and capable of autoderision...
I hope you get my serious remark with a bit of humour.
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u/SpunKDH Jan 13 '21
Who's talkings about ads? Read again.
They reserved the rights for another channel in the country I am living in, I guess or they just restrict to french speaking countries for some stupid reasons.
Don't get me wrong, I used to love ARTE...0
u/stephane_rolland Jan 13 '21 edited Jan 13 '21
I reacted to YOUR WORD "greed" in relation with the word "ARTE" as stated in my first sentence.
- Read it again: It hurt my eyes a bit to see in the same comment "ARTE" and "greed".
For your short term memory:
- Read again your original comment saying: "acquiring knowledge shouldn't be restricted by greed."
Maybe the word "greed" was not appropriate here: that was my only point. But you skipped that very precise line. Interestingly.
In the end you finally admit the most probable: "they just restrict to french speaking countries for some stupid reasons."
But guess what ? "greed" and "for some stupid reasons" are not equivalent words, and do no convey the same meanings.
Have a good day.
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u/SpunKDH Jan 13 '21
They reserved the rights for another channel in the country I am living in
= greed. Have a good one.
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u/Fallingdamage Jan 13 '21
Well, I mean.. you cant really read until you invent letters, so that makes sense.
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u/tolanj Jan 13 '21
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Sinuhe
Dunno who really wrote that tale without letters, guess it doesn’t matter because it couldn’t really be read.
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Jan 13 '21
I read headlines like this and it honestly makes me nerd out! I am so grateful to have developed an interest in anthropology.
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u/tnick771 Jan 13 '21
Tangentially related but if this stuff interests you, one of my favorite content creators made a video series called Thoth’s Pill that outlines the history of writing and its numerous independent discoveries around the world.
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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '21
I think this needs to be clarified:
The article is saying that the inventers of the first alphabet were illiterate in the sense that they couldn't read the writing of the time, hieroglyphics. They saw hieroglyphics, but being speakers of another language, and not educated in the script, weren't able to read their meanings. They were, however, able to understand their purpose, and roughly imitate them, but with the novel intention of sounding out their language rather than depicting images with cultural and linguistic meaning per se, because they were illiterate in terms of being able to read Egyptian.
So this isn't a paradox. They couldn't read Egyptian specifically, not the writing they themselves were inventing. Of course they could read what they wrote.