The world’s oldest alphabetic writing on clay cylinders unearthed in Syria. Credit: Egisto Sani / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the oldest examples of alphabetic writing in ...

Schwartz discovered the finger-sized cylinder, along with three others bearing similar etchings, in a tomb at Tell Umm el-Marra, an ancient city ... narrative of how the alphabet was introduced ...

Clay objects roughly the size of fingers were discovered during a dig at the ancient city of Umm el-Marra. The engraved symbols may be part of the earliest known alphabet. Credit: Glenn Schwartz ...

Symbols on finger-sized clay objects discovered during dig at ancient city of Umm el-Marra could be earliest known alphabet (Glenn Schwartz, Johns Hopkins University) This form of writing may have ...

The team has been involved in a 16-year archaeological excavation at Tell Umm-el Marra, one of the first medium-sized ancient urban ... scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around ...

Above: Clay objects roughly the size of fingers were discovered during a dig at the ancient city of Umm el-Marra. The engraved symbols may be part of the earliest known alphabet (Credit: Glenn ...

for example—these did not make use of an alphabet. Cuneiform, considered to be the oldest known writing system, was developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia (an ancient region centered on ...

“It changes the entire narrative of how the alphabet was introduced,” Professor Schwartz was quoted by Scientific American. The writing is on clay cylinders, each of which is about the thickness of a ...

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