Event

Invention of the alphabet

Semitic-speaking people create a script whose letters stand for consonants; most, and probably all, later alphabets descend from it.

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Latin alphabet Scholarship & press 1 2
By way of the Phoenician, Greek and Etruscan alphabets.

Invention of writing According to David R. Olson Scholarship & press 3
An indirect line: the alphabet's makers apparently took their method from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and whether Egyptian writing borrowed the idea from Sumer is uncertain.

Timeline 1 date

Proof 3 sources

Latin alphabet, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Scholarship & press Archived copy
Developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 bce, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 bce.
The Phoenicians (1500–300 B.C.), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History), Oct 2004. Scholarship & press Archived copy
Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Phoenicians was an alphabetic writing system that became the root of the Western alphabets when the Greeks adopted it.
Writing: History of writing systems, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Scholarship & press Archived copy
While all Western writing systems may be traced back to the beginnings of symbol making in Sumer, there is no reason to believe that Asian writing systems were borrowed from the Sumerian form.

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