Mother of all alphabets?

• Position: Brief Article

In the 10th century B.C., just south of Jerusalem, someone carved his ABC's on a limestone boulder. Last July, archaeologists at the site in central Israel, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in an ancient building. After an analysis, they concluded that it was the earliest known version of the Hebrew alphabet and a major milestone in the history of writing. If the archaeologists are correct, the stone bears the oldest reliably dated example of an abecedary--the letters of the alphabet written out in their traditional sequence. "All successive alphabets in the world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit," says Ron E. Tappy, an...