If the world had no alphabet
Humans have probably lived on earth for about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of the alphabet. Since then, the book of human history has turned a new page.
The history of the alphabet began in ancient Egypt around 3500 BC. Most alphabetic letters began as a simplified version of ancient drawings of animals, objects or signs. But writing characters and images was too slow for the business world, so people developed an alphabet that only used symbols. Each symbol represented one sound, and several were combined to make the sounds of a word. The alphabet was perfected by the Romans around 114 AD. with 26 letters, which are now called the Roman alphabet or the Latin alphabet.
Nowadays, the alphabet is used all over the world. More than ¾ of the world’s languages use an alphabet, and about 60% of the world’s population speaks languages that have a written alphabet. It is important to write and read so that human society can communicate and learn about history. Until the invention of writing, the only way people had to communicate was face to face. This prevented the information from being shared with any kind of widespread distribution. Based on the alphabet, humans developed a writing system that could help preserve human knowledge in something called a “book.” Thanks to the book, people could read and know more about the world and shaped the education system as it is today. Therefore, the book is one of the most valuable treasures in the world. Alphabet also plays an important role for merchants and traders in keeping records of their business.
Have you ever imagined what the world would be like today if the ancients had not invented the alphabet? I dare not think about it, but it must be the worst of the worst. Without the alphabet, humanity would never have reached the levels we have today. If the alphabet had not been invented, the book would never have appeared and therefore people would have been uneducated and life would have been boring. You wouldn’t know anything about history, human knowledge wouldn’t be preserved, and you wouldn’t be able to read my essay either. We will be narrow minded and shallow. Our imaginations would be limited. There would be no paper, printing press, television, Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein,… Instead, tolerance would be low and the world would be destroyed by war and cruel. In my opinion, that would be a pretty miserable world where no one could read, write or think freely. Honestly, if the alphabet didn’t exist, there would be a new way of communicating ideas.
We now use the alphabet in our daily reading and writing. I can’t imagine if one day the alphabet starts to disappear. It will be a terrible mess and everything will dissolve into nothingness. So don’t let anything happen to the alphabet!
#world #alphabet