Older than the ABCs: Ancient alphabet discovered in Syria

On The Record

The Latin-script alphabet used for English isn’t the only alphabet in use today. Think, for example, of Greek or Arabic scripts.

There are also older alphabets. Until recently, we’d thought the first one was created in ancient Egypt, more than 3800 years ago.

But now, it appears that an older alphabet has been discovered, in use 500 years before the Egyptian one. We speak to Glenn Schwartz, a professor of archaeology at Johns Hopkins University who led the team that made the discovery.

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