Matt Baker says, "I originally titled the chart 'Evolution of the English alphabet' and many people commented that there is no such thing as an English alphabet and that the chart should be titled 'Evolution of the Latin alphabet'. Actually, both titles are correct. Obviously, many European languages use the same Latin script. But some use a slightly different number of letters. When one is referring to the set of Latin letters used for a particular language, it's ok to refer to that set as the '[language name] alphabet'. However, in the end, in order to be more inclusive, I decided to change the title to simply 'Evolution of the Alphabet' and use the row titles to make it clear that it is the evolution of the standard Latin script that is being shown (as opposed to say, the Cyrillic or Hebrew scripts)."
You can see how the chart begins with something called the Proto-Sinaitic script which was derived in Canaan, around the biblical Land of Israel. It was repurposed from Egyptian hieroglyphs that were commonly seen in the area (its name comes from Mount Sinai). This Proto-Sinaitic script influenced other Semitic languages: it was the precursor to the Phoenician alphabet, which was used in the area of modern-day Lebanon and spread across the Mediterranean, becoming the basis for Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and of course, Greek. The first forms of the Archaic Greek script are dated circa 750 BCE, which then grew into Latin, with Archaic Latin script appearing circa 500 BCE. The evolution into Roman script, with the same recognizable letters used in our modern English, occurred 500 years later in 1 CE. Fascinating.
