The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1931-02-27

prepared by the National Geographic
Society, Washington, d. c.
THE great mystery of the Alpha
bet, the most important intel
lectual tool that mankind ever
invented, seems nearer solution
as the result of the recent digging up
of tablets with a new sort Of cunel-
form inscription at Ras Shamara on
the coast of Syria, at the eastern end
of the Mediterranean sea. The tab
lets have not yet been deciphered, but
it has been determined that they are
written in % characters, which seems
to indicate the use of real alphabet.
The part that alphabets play in the
life of a people is indicated by the
change in Turkey not many months
ago from the Arabic to the Latin
alphabet. The decision of Turkey to
throw overheard the alphabet she had
used for many centuries, and to re-
place it with the alphabet of western
Europe and the Americas, was not SO
revolutionary a step as it at first ap-
peared.
1t was not as if Turkey were uproot-
ing some cherished cultural growth
and setting up in its place foreign
substitute. No true alphabet can be
found in use today by a people who
has originated it. When it comes to
alphabets all the world has borrowed.
1t is an amazing thing, but the prob
lem of resolving human speech into its
thirty-odd sounds and representing
them by symbols seems to have been
solved only once-within historic
times, at least-and from this happy
bit Of analysis and invention all the
true alphabets in use today appear to
have descended.
The English alphabet came directly
from the Latin. 1t is, in fact, the
same alphabet that Rome used save
for such minor changes as the addi-
ton of a separate 81" (the Latin II"
served for both ''I'' and "J''), and the
expansion of the Latin "UV" into
"UVW."
The Romans, in turn, borrowed
their alphabet from the Greeks, chang
ing the forms of the letters somewhat
and dropping some characters. And
the Greeks, as evidence and tradition
show, took their letter system from the
Phoenicians, even retaining the names
with slight variations.
Greeks Added the voweIs.
In passing the alphabet through
their hands, the Greeks gave 1t one Of
it's most important additions. They
added definite vowel symbols to the
Phoenician alphabet. which consisted
solely of % consonants. The Greeks
''tinkered" further with the alphabet
so that the Athenian version, includ-
ing vowels, came to have "a letters.
They also changed the direction of
writing. The Phoenicians wrote from
right to left; the Greeks adopted the
left to right direction now employed
by all the western world.
The greatest problem in connection
with the alphabet is to determine
where the Phoenicians got it. There
have been widely divergent theories
as to this. It has been variously sug-
gested that the % characters were
adopted from the hieroglyphics and
the hieratic writing of Egypt, the
cuneiform characters of Babylon, and
symbols of the Hittites, Cretans, and
ancient Greeks. No evidence so far
found seems sufficient to determine
this matter. Probably the most gen.
orally accepted theory is that the
Phoenicians, familiar because of their
trading voyages with the various cum
bersome writing systems around the
Mediterranean, chose from them such
symbols as they needed, stripped off
the complications and simplified writ
ing for the first time to a nearly true
alphabetic basis.
The Phoenicians are supposed to
have been urged to this step by the
desire to conserve time in keeping
their accounts and records of trading
ventures. IL is to the bustling, impa-
tient "Babbits" Of more than 5000
years ago, therefore, that the world
probably owes the device that has
made possible the great advances in
lllCIdtuIC anu SNACA(C, duQ
all of the continuing activities Of civ
tlization.
We take the alphabet-and all these
words that are built from it with
which to record the shadings of our
ideas-so much as matter of course
that it is difficult to realize that for
thousands and perhaps tens of thou
sands of years man had no better
method Of recording his thoughts than
with a tumble of picture writing, SYM
bols such as our dollar sign or the
ideographs of the Chinese, ard sylla-
BILE characters such as those Of the
japanese.
Pictures and Symbols.
The earliest written records were
made in pictures which represented
things and actions. Abstract ideas
could be suggested only in the crudest
roundabout way. After centuries of
use these pictures became convention
allied into symbols, such as the ideo-
grams of the Egyptians, and the Mayas
of America, and some Of those still
used in China today.