DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET 



ing and the like, before the idea of setting them aside as 

 phonetic symbols was ever conceived. Nothing is 

 more certain, in the judgment of the present-day in- 

 vestigator, than that man learned to write by slow and 

 painful stages. It is probable that the conception 

 of such an analysis of speech sounds as would make 

 the idea of an alphabet possible came at a very late 

 stage of social evolution, and as the culminating 

 achievement of a long series of improvements in the 

 art of writing. The precise steps that marked this 

 path of intellectual development can for the most 

 part be known only by inference; yet it is probable 

 that the main chapters of the story may be repro- 

 duced with essential accuracy. 



FIRST STEPS 



For the very first chapters of the story we must go 

 back in imagination to the prehistoric period. Even 

 barbaric man feels the need of self-expression, and 

 strives to make his ideas manifest to other men by 

 pictorial signs. The cave-dwellers scratched pictures 

 of men and animals on the surface of a reindeer horn 

 or mammoth tusk as mementos of his prowess. The 

 American Indian does essentially the same thing to-day, 

 making pictures that crudely record his successes in 

 war and the chase. The Northern Indian had got no 

 farther than this when the white man discovered 

 America; but the Aztecs of the Southwest and the 

 Maya people of Yucatan had carried their picture- 

 making to a much higher state of elaboration. 3 They 

 had developed systems of pictographs or hieroglyphics 



