Gaby
Scholars long believed the first alphabet was created by the ancient Egyptians. However, a new discovery challenges that idea and pushes the timeline for the earliest alphabetic writing back by roughly 500 years.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, say they have found the oldest known alphabetic texts engraved on small clay tablets.
These finger-sized, cylindrical tablets were uncovered in a burial site from the Early Bronze Age in the city of Umm el-Marra—one of the oldest locations in the Middle East, where bustling trade routes once intersected.
What Did the Archaeologists Discover?
Professor Glen Schwartz, who has led the excavations for 16 years, noted, “The alphabet changed the way people lived, thought, and communicated. This discovery shows that people were experimenting with new communication technologies much earlier and in different places than we previously imagined.”
“Previously, scholars believed that the alphabet was invented in Egypt or nearby sometime after 1900 BCE,” Professor Schwartz explained. “But the artifacts found by his team are older and come from a different region, suggesting that the alphabet may have a completely different origin story than we thought.”
Radiocarbon dating revealed the tablets were produced around 2400 BCE, making them about 500 years older than other known examples of alphabetic writing, the Daily Mail reported.
In addition to the text tablets, archaeologists discovered six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry, pottery, a spearhead, and intact ceramic jugs in the tombs of Umm el-Marra.
The lead researcher believes the cylindrical tablets served as primitive labels. He suggested the perforated tablets could have been tied to jugs to inform buyers about the contents, the producer, the place of origin, or the destination.
As Professor Schwartz pointed out, before the alphabet emerged, early writing systems like hieroglyphs were extremely difficult to learn. “There were thousands of symbols that were very complicated to use, so only a very small group of people could learn to write and read,” he said.
