Writing Systems

Every way humans have figured out how to freeze speech onto a surface — cuneiform to Unicode.

7 posts· 3500 BCE – 800 BCE

• The Greek alphabet, or how borrowed consonants became the world's first vowels 800 BCE
• The Phoenician alphabet, or how twenty-two consonants built the rest 1050 BCE
• Oracle bone script, or how the Shang talked to their ancestors 1200 BCE
• The Indus Valley script, or what five signs can hide 2600 BCE
• Egyptian hieroglyphs, or how language learned to last 3100 BCE
• Cuneiform: the script that could say your name 3200 BCE
• Proto-cuneiform tokens: the first writing was a receipt 3500 BCE