In Syria, archaeologists have now discovered what may be the oldest evidence of alphabetic writing: abstract characters carved into four small clay slabs. They are about 4,400 years old and could represent an early form of the alphabet, they report.
According to the website of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, the findings indicate that the writing discovered on small, finger-length clay cylinders could be about 500 years older than any other previously known writing.
Clay cylinder found in a grave
Glenn Schwartz’s researchers found the clay cylinders with the characters in a grave in the Syrian Bronze Age city of Umm-el-Marra. The writing dates from around 2400 BC. “This new discovery shows that people experimented with new communication technologies much earlier and in a different place than we previously imagined,” Schwartz said on the university’s website.
The writing could not yet be deciphered
“There were holes in the cylinders, so I imagine a piece of string was used to attach them to another object. They probably served as a label. Maybe they provide information about the contents of a barrel, maybe also about where the barrel came from or who owned it,” Schwartz explains. “Without a way to translate the scriptures, we can only speculate.”
“Until now, scientists have assumed that the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BC,” says Schwartz. “But our artifacts are older and from a different area of the map, which suggests the alphabet had a very different origin story than we thought.”
Source: Krone

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