A Roman Alphabet and Arabic Numerals

Sorry to break the trend, but I am going to step away from the idea of mediums ... and into the realm of numbers.

The Evolution of Numbers

I don't know if I have said this previously, but I love the etymology of words, and knowing the origins of things and what that can teach us about the thing itself, whether it is whole words or letters or numerical symbols.  That's partly why I was so happy I got the Phoenician civilization, because it had the first alphabet (basically).  But as I have continued to study the alphabet and where ours came from (if you can't find "Letter Perfect" at the library, it is because I have it :-),  the thought occurred to me: if we use the Roman alphabet, why don't we use Roman numerals too?  Where did the Arabic ones come from?

The Origins of the Alphabet, Phoenician Style

In the beginning, there were Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform.  From that sprung the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet that is the Mother of every other alphabetic system known to man.

Khmer--the language this time

Elvish

Khmer

All growing up my family read Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. I loved the story and the poetry and I loved the funny writing on the cover. How great was my surprise when, preparing to serve a mission for the LDS church, I encountered another missionary with the Bible in what appeared to be elvish. I had no idea that that language actually existed outside of Middle Earth. The missionary was going to Cambodia, not Middle Earth and the language was sadly not elvish but Khmer.

Sitting on the Fence . . . For Thousands of Years

As we began this unit on written knowledge, I was rather excited.  I love hand writing and different symbols and everything that has to do with writing.  The power of the written word is something I have loved ever since I learned to read.  I suddenly became disappointed when I realized that I needed to talk about writing within the Hopi culture, mostly because they do not have an alphabet.  I guess that kind of puts a damper on writing if you don't have an alphabet.  Luckily as I have studied out the topic, I have realized that the Hopi language and people can give us a lot of cool clues as to how writing systems are developed because they stayed with a transitionary step to developing writing systems - the pictograph.

The famous "Hopi Prophecy Rock" - Said to depict
the consequences of not living in harmony
with the earth.  Says that if we don't there will be a
WWIII-like cataclysmic event. 

Etruscan Writing and Language

The writing system of the Etruscans is highly correlated with other Indo-European systems (particularly Greek), but the language of the Etruscans is quite the opposite. Linguists have a hard time placing it within a language family, and it seems fairly isolated.