Where do writing systems come from?

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Writing is a technology

3. Other times cultures borrowed the technology of writing

4. Conclusion

5. 📖 Recommended Reading

6. 📑 References

Introduction

Sometimes you’ll see it said that all the world’s writing systems descend from three original scripts—Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese logograms, or Mayan hieroglyphs:

@gavinmallot on Threads (https://www.threads.net/@gavinmallott/post/DBJ89SsSRz1)

It’s true that most of the world’s writing systems derive from one of these three scripts. For example, the Latin alphabet, the Arabic abjad, the Hebrew alphabet, the Devanagari abugida (used for most languages in India), the other Brahmic scripts (including those in the Pacific), and the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets did all derive from the Phoenician alphabet, which itself derives from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Writing is a technology

But what about Sumerian cuneiform? It predates the use of Egyptian hieroglyphs (c. 3400 BCE vs. 3250 BCE), with a continuous archaeological record showing the evolution from pictographic proto-writing to abstract signs.

A table illustrating the gradual evolution of cuneiform signs from concrete and pictographic to symbolic and abstract. (Wikipedia: Cuneiform)