Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

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CONCLUSION
Glancing back over the course of the development of writing which I have traced in the foregoing pages, the reader will realize how the whole of mankind has been furnished with the most convenient vehicle of expression for thought and communication. This revolutionary effect in writing was produced by the north-western Semites who in the first half of the second millennium B.c. invented the alphabet, and developed it in the second half of the same millennium.
Various peoples and tribes on every continent have developed systems of writing, many independently. A few systems have reached a high level, others have been arrested at a lower stage, some are still nascent.
Syllabism seems to have been the highest stage of writing which was reached independently by some peoples. The alphabet has been invented only once. C'est là une invention qu'on ne peut faire deux fois (Dunand). It is essentially the same script which we use now.
Here I should like to point out two fortunate coincidences in the development of the alphabet which influenced the whole history of the civilization of mankind.
(1) The Semites had been enabled, owing to factors of geography and culture and circumstances of time and economic structure, to invent the alphabet, but this achievement had been made easier, or even, perhaps, possible by the fact that Semitic-Hamitic is the only group among the main linguistic families which is based on consonantal sounds.
(2) The alphabet passed from the Semites to the Greeks, and thereby came to completion, because Greek cannot do without vowels, and is moreover one of the most euphonious languages of the world.
While, however, it would be unhistorical to admit the possibility of the alphabet having been invented in another continent or in another period or for a language belonging to a different group, there seems at least a probability that it could have been completed without the intervention of the Greeks.
The alphabet has a fascinating history, lasting over 3,500 years and extending over the whole world. I have tried to trace this history in the present book. I have tried to introduce logical divisions and sub-divisions in this immense mass of material, though the space at my disposal is, obviously, too narrow to enable me to deal in detail with each problem. Some chapters may perhaps appear to be too long in comparison with others; these are Chapter VII of the First Part, and Chapters VI and VII
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