Using trowels and brushes to remove ancient soil at an Early Bronze Age burial site in ... began to explore the possibility that the symbols on the cylinders could be an early Semitic alphabet dating ...

Researchers have discovered evidence of what they say is the world’s oldest alphabet, believed to have existed in the Middle East hundreds of years earlier than other ancient scripts.

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.