When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A clay artifact, about the size of a finger, was discovered during an excavation at the ancient ...

Long before the “A, B, C Song” — built upon the Latin alphabet — and the alphas, betas and gammas of Ancient Greek, cultures around the world were communicating with one another. The Sumerians of ...

What appears to be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history is etched onto finger-length, clay cylinders ...

Clay cylinders that are 4,400 years old, unearthed from a tomb in Syria, are inscribed with traces of the earliest known alphabetic writing system. The tomb, discovered in Umm el-Marra in 2004, ...

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. What appears to be evidence ...

Just outside the Syrian city of Aleppo, archaeologists have discovered what may be the oldest example of alphabetic writing ever found. Ahmad Sofi via Unsplash UPDATE: This story has been updated to ...