Archaeologists May Have Just Found the Oldest Alphabet Ever

Between1994 and 2010 , American and Dutch archaeologistsexcavatedan Early Bronze Age site east of Aleppo , Syria . In a well - preserved grave , they found skeletons , atomic number 79 and silver jewelry , cooking utensil , a spear-point , and pottery . Next to the pottery , however , they uncover something potentially more worthful than everything else combine : four 4,400 - class - quondam clay cylinder etch with what seems to be an ABC’s .

Now , Glenn Schwartz , the Johns Hopkins University archaeologist who made the discovery , is claiming that the four digit - length artifacts might be the oldest known evidence of alphabetical committal to writing in chronicle . If this assessment , detail in a November 20 universitystatementand harbinger at theAmerican Society of Overseas Research‘s Annual Meeting the undermentioned day , is correct , it would cut off premature assumptions about the origin and gap of the first known ABCs .

“ Alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the socially elite . alphabetical authorship deepen the way people lived , how they thought , how they communicated , ” Schwartz pronounce in the program line . “ And this new discovery shows that people were try out with young communication technologies much earlier and in a different fix than we had suppose before now . ”

Clay objects roughly the size of fingers were discovered during a dig at the ancient city of Umm el-Marra. The engraved symbols may be part of the earliest known alphabet.

Clay objects roughly the size of fingers were discovered during a dig at the ancient city of Umm el-Marra. The engraved symbols may be part of the earliest known alphabet.© Glenn Schwartz, Johns Hopkins University

Scholars have moot the origin of the first ABC for year , but most of them concur that the first known alphabet wasdevelopedin the first half of the second millennium BCE . The new determination could interchange this . atomic number 6 date — a tried - and - true method acting for date stamp organic thing — placed the small cylinder to around 2400 BCE , predating that timeline by rough 500 years .

“ Previously , scholars thought the first principle was fabricate in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BCE , ” Schwartz allege . “ But our artifacts are elder and from a unlike area on the mapping , suggesting the ABC may have an entirely dissimilar lineage story than we think . ”

The finding came within the context of a joint Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam mining at Tell Umm - el Marra , an urban colonisation launch around2700 BCEin modern - daytime westerly Syria suspected of being the ancient city ofTuba .

Oldest Known Alphabet 1

The four clay cylinders are inscribed with what might be the oldest known evidence of alphabetic writing. Image: Glenn Schwartz, Johns Hopkins University

5,500 - Year - Old Seals Offer New Clues About the Birth of Writing

“ The piston chamber were perforated , so I ’m reckon a string tether them to another object to playact as a label . Maybe they detail the contents of a vas , or perhaps where the vas came from , or who it belong to , ” Schwartz said . “ Without a means to interpret the writing , we can only speculate . ”

The finding has the potentiality to upend established archeologic assumptions about the descent of the oldest jazz alphabet , and with it the scratch of crucial developments that accompany , including more effective track record - keeping and long - distance communicating .

Tina Romero Instagram