Excavations at Tell Umm el-Marra, an Early Broze Age urban centre in Syria, uncovered a remarkably intact tomb containing clay cylinders stamped with some form of Semitic alphabet, which carbon dating revealed to be around 500 years older than the previous earliest recorded alphabetic script.

Credits: Getty Images; Author: Jordi Sala;

According to Glenn Schwartz, a professor of archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, scholars had previously thought the alphabet was invented around Egypt sometime around 1900 BCE, but the artifacts are older and from a different area on the map, which suggests that the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story.