While early writing systems emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt over 5,000 years ago, they used symbols rather than a bona fide alphabet, which appeared significantly later, around 1800 BCE.

Alphabetic language, or written language made of individual letters, is a newer invention, but now, archaeologists believe they have discovered the “oldest known alphabet” ever found.

The Spanish National Research Council recently announced the discovery of a written alphabet that may be 2,600 years old. It dates back to Tartessos, an ancient civilization.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, University at Buffalo researchers are taking a major step toward boosting online access to documents written in ancient Sanskrit, modern Hindi and dozens of ...

Archaeologists say they have uncovered evidence of what may be the world's oldest known alphabet. The alphabetic writing system was identified on finger-length clay cylinders excavated from a tomb ...

The alphabet remained on the cultural periphery of the Mediterranean until six centuries or more after its invention, seen only in words scratched on objects found across the Middle East, such as ...

To say that mystery glyphs look like “early alphabetic letters” is to say that they look like crude versions of hieroglyphs 24 April, p 15. Finding such hieroglyphs in Syria 850 years before ...