[HN Gopher] A UC Santa Cruz professor unearthed the oldest alpha...
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A UC Santa Cruz professor unearthed the oldest alphabet yet
Author : diodorus
Score : 133 points
Date : 2025-01-13 20:50 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.universityofcalifornia.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.universityofcalifornia.edu)
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| The inscribed Umm el-Marra cylinders of northwestern Syria, circa
| 2400 BC, 500 years before alphabetic writing was derived in Sinai
| from Egyptian hieratic phonetic writing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script
| casenmgreen wrote:
| So we are in fact talking a _non_ proto-Sinaitic script?
|
| One that presumably did not succeed, and was superseded by
| proto-Sinaitic?
|
| Or perhaps influenced / led to proto-Sinaitic?
| adrian_b wrote:
| The article does not provide the slightest clue about why the
| researchers believe that this is an alphabetic script, taking
| into account that they say that it does not resemble other
| known scripts.
|
| Usually it is assumed that a script is alphabetic instead of
| being syllabic when the total number of distinct symbols is
| small, but this is not foolproof, because there are languages
| with a relatively small number of distinct syllables, like
| Japanese, so there is an overlap in the number of distinct
| symbols between alphabetic scripts for languages with a great
| number of phonemes and syllabic scripts for languages with a
| small number of syllables.
|
| However, in this case it appears that the total amount of
| recovered text is quite small, so it would contain a small
| number of distinct symbols even if the original writing
| system had a greater number of distinct symbols, which did
| not happen to be recorded here.
|
| Because the small total number of distinct symbols may be an
| accident in this case, it would not be enough to prove that
| this is an alphabetic script.
|
| One should not forget that already since its origin,
| millennia before this, the Egyptian writing system had
| contained as a subset a set of symbols equivalent with the
| later Semitic alphabets, i.e. where each symbol was used for
| a single consonant.
|
| However the Egyptian writing system has never used its
| alphabetic subset alone (except sometimes for transcribing
| foreign names), but together with many other symbols used for
| writing multiple consonants.
|
| The invention of the Semitic alphabets did not add anything
| new, but it greatly simplified the Egyptian writing system by
| deleting all symbols used for multiple consonants and using
| exclusively the small number of symbols denoting a single
| consonant.
|
| Because the alphabetic script has been invented by trying to
| apply the principles of the Egyptian writing to a non-
| Egyptian language, it could have been inspired by an already
| existing practice of using the alphabetic subset of the
| Egyptian writing for the transcription of foreign words.
|
| All the many writing systems that have been invented
| independently of the Egyptian writing have used symbols
| denoting either syllables or words. Only the Egyptian writing
| had the peculiar characteristic of denoting only the
| consonants of the speech, independently of the vowels, which
| is what has enabled the development of alphabetic writing
| systems from it.
| airstrike wrote:
| Wait, you're the same person that made the super insightful
| comment about the origins of life and RNA yesterday...
|
| I'm honestly amazed at how you know so much about
| everything
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >the same person that made the super insightful comment
| about the origins of life and RNA yesterday...
|
| Astute observation.
|
| That's some worthwhile reading.
|
| I would say that some people can make use of natural
| intelligence better than others can do with the
| artificial stuff.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > All the many writing systems that have been invented
| independently of the Egyptian writing have used symbols
| denoting either syllables or words. Only the Egyptian
| writing had the peculiar characteristic of denoting only
| the consonants of the speech, independently of the vowels,
| which is what has enabled the development of alphabetic
| writing systems from it.
|
| Hangul was developed independently of Egyptian script and
| is purely alphabetic.
| kagevf wrote:
| > there are languages with a relatively small number of
| distinct syllables, like Japanese
|
| Japanese has around 50 syllabic symbols, depending on how
| you count - include both sets of kana? include more archaic
| kana? etc
|
| What would be a more typical number of syllabic symbols? I
| tried googling it to get an idea, but couldn't find much
| useful information. I guess Arabic has 28?
| airstrike wrote:
| I think they meant syllables specifically, not syllabic
| symbols. Meanings syllabic symbols might get confused for
| an alphabet if the language has a sufficiently small set
| of syllables. See
| https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/36909
| kagevf wrote:
| Yeah, was aware of that possibility; I guess I should
| have made a point about the disctinction between symbols
| vs "possible sound combinations" (my words). And even
| "possible sound combinations" can be further limited to
| "actually used sound combinations" as mentioned in the
| answer on that SO link.
|
| So, in terms of "possible sound combinations" I think
| Japanese would likely be on the lower side given that the
| number of sounds are also pretty low. Alright, thank you
| for that reply; the point in the original post I replied
| to makes more sense to me now.
| gschizas wrote:
| As far as I can understand that's not a real alphabet, it's an
| abjad (consonants only)
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| By that standard, many alphabets, including the Phoenician and
| Arabic alphabets, aren't "real" alphabets.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| Indeed, Arabic is an abjad.
| fsckboy wrote:
| shouldn't it be called a bjd?
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I know you're joking, but Arabic doesn't write short
| vowels only. A as in "ah" is still written, so it would
| be "Abjd"
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Linear A was the first alphabet, and greek gave
| "alphabet" its name.
|
| I almost get the sense that people are interpreting abjad as
| "lesser-than" an alphabet. It's just a distinction, it's not
| a value judgement.
| adrian_b wrote:
| This is a modern distinction.
|
| Until recently the term "alphabet" was used for any writing
| system where the symbols correspond approximately with
| phonemes, regardless whether both consonants and vowels are
| written as in all alphabets derived from or inspired by the
| Greek alphabet, or only the consonants are written, like in
| other writing systems derived from the old Semitic alphabet,
| without passing through the Greek alphabet.
|
| Then the term "abjad" has been created, and also the term
| "abugida" (for alphabets where the base symbols are for
| consonants and the vowels are added as diacritic marks around
| the consonants), and the sense of "alphabet" has been
| restricted, in order to distinguish these 3 kinds of alphabets,
| but "alphabet" in the older wider sense can still be
| encountered frequently, either in the older literature or in
| informal speech, so one should be able to recognize both the
| stricter and the wider meanings.
|
| In TFA, "alphabet" is used in the old wider sense. Moreover, it
| is not even used correctly in that sense, because they did not
| find a written "alphabet" like those used in teaching, but they
| have found a few written texts that are believed to have been
| written using an alphabetic script.
|
| The oldest actual alphabets that have been found (which show
| the alphabetic order of the letters) are for the Ugaritic
| alphabet, which is older than the Phoenician alphabet, but much
| more recent than the oldest inscriptions that are believed to
| have been written with an alphabetic script.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > This is a modern distinction.
|
| Well, the actual scripts were distinguished semantically all
| along, and "alphabet" is also a word newer than the scripts
| in question. We should probably just use the words that make
| most sense to modern english speakers rather than... whomever
| you're referring to. Or just use "phonetic script" or
| something.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The word "alphabet" has been used at least since the second
| century AD (e.g. by Tertullian), but it is composed from
| the names of the first 2 letters of the Phoenician
| alphabet, names that must be at least 3 millennia old.
|
| Without additional conventions, "alphabet" would have been
| the appropriate name for any writing systems derived from
| the Phoenician alphabet, which include the majority of the
| writing systems based on alphabets, abjads or abugidas. The
| few other such writing systems, which have not passed
| through the Phoenician alphabet, are those derived from the
| Ancient South Arabian script, which for some reason had a
| different alphabetic order of the letters than the Northern
| Semitic alphabets, so it did not start with Alep and Bet.
| intuitionist wrote:
| Funny that the word abugida is itself taken from the
| Amharic word for the Northern Semitic letter ordering--as
| you say, the traditional order for fidale goes
| halahhama...
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| While the greek letter names are derived from phoenician
| (e.g. aleph/alef/alep and bet), my understanding is that
| the term was first coined in reference to the greek
| script (e.g. alpha + bet-). It does, however, seem
| increasingly silly to look to etymology to argue for why
| we should use the terms as I did when actual evidence as
| to the origin seems extremely sketchy at best and may not
| be relevant to our current needs.
|
| I just think it's useful to distinguish consonantal
| scripts from those with full vowel inclusion. Why not use
| alphabet/abjad for this? There's already a broad
| understanding of this meaning; why not lean into it?
|
| I'll also admit this gets more complicated when I see
| people referring to an "abjad alphabet", but this leaves
| us with no way to describe an alphabet with consonants
| and vowels as opposed to a consonantal one.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The oldest actual alphabets that have been found (which
| show the alphabetic order of the letters) are for the
| Ugaritic alphabet, which is older than the Phoenician
| alphabet
|
| You're doing a lot of equivocating between identity and
| ancestry. (e.g. saying that "alphabet" is composed of the
| names of two Phoenician letters rather than two Greek ones.)
|
| In that framework, can we actually say that Ugaritic script
| is older than Phoenician script? My impression was that all
| of our knowledge of Ugaritic arises by coincidence, just that
| we happened to excavate a tell that turned out to keep
| records in what is as far as we know a script unique to it.
| Do we have reason to believe that someone wasn't using a
| proto-Phoenician script at the same time and we just haven't
| excavated them?
| leoh wrote:
| The Hebrew alphabet does not include vowels.
| bunupepeurjfh wrote:
| I hope we will get much more research like this, now when Syria
| is liberated and has Democratic governors!
| donbox wrote:
| Its friendly governors but not yet proven to be democratic.
| koshergweilo wrote:
| How democratic a regime is can only be measured in hindsight
| unfortunately
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> I try to keep that in mind when I'm excavating today; scholars
| of the future are counting on us to leave the best documentation
| we can.
|
| The answer is to stop digging. It is understood that imaging
| techniques will eventually be good enough that artifacts may soon
| be studdied without disturbing the surrounding soil, without
| destroying all that evidence that future generations might be
| able to use. Of course that means disrupting the dig-to-
| museum/auction/television pipeline that funds the field.
| rastignack wrote:
| Who knows what will happen in Syria in the next decades. We
| need to document as much as we can, while we can.
| detourdog wrote:
| Here is something regarding a 3d scan of a building destroyed
| by Isis. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/27/isis-
| palmyra-...
| mmooss wrote:
| > It is understood that imaging techniques will eventually be
| good enough that artifacts may soon be studdied without
| disturbing the surrounding soil
|
| Who understands that? It's very interesting. Is there somewhere
| in archaeology where it's discussed? Is there a paper or
| article? It might be interesting for HN's front page.
| detourdog wrote:
| I have heard old time time tv episodes explain that. They
| were asked why sto digging a site and that was the answer.
| Archeology seems to be self aware as a discipline. The modern
| participants have been ham strung by earlier generations.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It is happening today. Chambers inside Egypt's great pyramid
| were detected in 2016 using muon imaging. It was a slow
| process but radically less damaging than the alternatives
| such as drilling test holes. More commonly, ground
| penetrating radar is regularly used to avoid digging test or
| exploratory trenches across sites. As resolution increases,
| fewer and fewer trenches need be dug. Scans are often used
| years prior to digging as a non-invasive way to confirm the
| existance of structures in aid of grant proposals. At some
| point, the scans will be the entire dig.
| kittikitti wrote:
| The article states, "symbols on the cylinders could be an early
| Semitic alphabet" and this is when they lost me. I guess we're
| just pushing propaganda now.
| jowday wrote:
| That's common parlance in archeology for ancient languages in
| that region.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic-speaking_peo...
| jonstewart wrote:
| And in linguistics.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It's not specialized at all; "Semitic" is the only word for
| this concept used in English.
|
| In German they still talk about Hamito-Semitic languages,
| but we call those Afroasiatic now.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Semitic is the scientific term for a family of languages, like
| Indo-European or Uralic. Today, the most important languages of
| this group are Arabic and Hebrew, but in the past many other
| languages of this group have been very important, e.g. Aramaic
| and Akkadian.
|
| It is very weird that in the phrase "anti-Semitic" most people
| understand Semitic to refer to Israelis, while today most of
| the Semites are Arabs.
|
| The term "Semitic" is not at all appropriate as a linguistic
| term, but nobody has succeeded to find any acceptable
| replacement.
|
| In the Bible, the populations were divided in 3 groups, sons of
| Japheth (hence the American word "Caucasian", because Japheth
| is a term for Caucasus), sons of Shem and sons of Ham. From
| Shem and Ham, the linguistic terms "Semitic" and "Hamitic" have
| been derived.
|
| However the use of these words for classifying languages has
| been based on a misunderstanding of the Bible. In that
| classification of the populations from the Bible, the division
| did not have anything to do with their descendance from
| ancestors speaking a common language, but it was completely
| determined by the political dependence of the territories by
| the time when the Genesis was composed.
|
| The so-called sons of Ham where those who lived in territories
| dominated by Egypt ("Ham" is related to the native name of
| Egypt; Egypt is a Greek word), while the so-called sons of Shem
| were those who lived in territories dominated by Babylon or
| Assyria ("Shem" may be related to "Sumer").
|
| As one of the examples that demonstrate that the Genesis
| classification was political, not linguistic, the Phoenicians
| were sons of Ham, not sons of Shem, like the Arabs and Hebrews,
| despite the fact that the Phoenician language was a Semitic
| language almost identical to Hebrew (the main difference
| between Phoenicians and Hebrews was in religion). The
| Phoenicians were sons of Ham, because at that time most
| Phoenician cities accepted the suzerainty of Egypt, even if
| they had a certain autonomy.
| legerdemain wrote:
| I almost took an introductory course on archeology with Glenn
| Schwartz, many years ago, but dropped it after the first class. I
| remember having very different emotional responses to faculty
| members as a student. Schwartz struck me as elegant, diffident,
| blue-blooded, and completely disinterested in teaching a bunch of
| young morons who were just taking the course as a distribution
| requirement. I'm glad to see that he and his former students are
| an influential force in this area of study.
| godelski wrote:
| I always say a professor has (at least) 3 personalities, each
| of which do not need be similar to one another
| - Teacher - Advisor - Faculty
|
| I've seen professors be great faculty members where everyone
| likes them but they are an abusive advisor and terrible
| teacher. I've seen professors be amazing advisors, terrible
| teachers, and most faculty members hate them (often happens
| when lots of department politics and this person is usually
| highly research focused). I've also seen people be good at all
| 3 and terrible at all 3. The current chair of my department is
| the latter and was unanimously voted against for chair, but no
| one else ran so he won by default lol.
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