History of the Alphabet

Phoenician scribes borrowed hieroglyphic pictures to create their consonant symbols, using a mnemonic principle where each letter’s name started with the sound that letter represented.

The Phoenician alphabet’s inventors unknowingly created a writing system whose secret power transcended any single language, enabling adaptation to fundamentally different linguistic structures.

Akkadian scribes adapted Sumerian cuneiform writing to their own language, inheriting a system with over 2,000 symbols that divided into word signs and sound signs.

Ancient Egyptian scribes developed a sophisticated writing system containing over 1,500 distinct symbols, combining two fundamental approaches to representing language through visual marks.

Greek-speaking peoples adapted the Phoenician consonant-only alphabet to their Indo-European language, discovering that consonants alone failed to capture Greek phonology adequately.

The video synthesizes information theory’s fundamental insight—information transcends specific symbols, languages, or media, existing purely as selection from possible alternatives.

Egyptian scribes developed papyrus as a lightweight, portable alternative to stone monuments and clay tablets, fundamentally changing how information moved through space.

Phoenician maritime traders, operating along Mediterranean coasts around 1000 BCE, developed and spread a standardized writing system based on strict one-to-one consonant mapping.

Ancient Semitic-speaking workers or traders in the Sinai Peninsula around 1700 BCE created inscriptions representing a revolutionary break from previous writing systems.

Developing writing systems required humans to divide continuous experience into finite atomic units represented by discrete symbols, fundamentally distinguishing writing from continuous media like painting.