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  • Deborah Preuss, pccdeborahh@cosocial.ca
    Jun 13, 2026, 1:08 AM

    @CelloMomOnCars #TIL

    "… languages were written on a tablet of stone using a chisel. Since most people are naturally right-handed, they would hold a hammer with the right hand and a chisel with the left. … That’s why you find most older languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi) written from right to left.

    When ink was invented, … writing from left to right became more preferable in many parts of the world since this method avoided smudging ink."

    Source: writingbeginner.com/are-arabic

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Replies

  • Elena ``of Valhalla''valhalla@social.gl-como.it
    Jun 13, 2026, 7:16 AM

    @deborahh that phrase feels off

    the oldest writing system, cuneiform, was written first and foremost by pressing a stylus on clay, with carving in stone reserved for exceptionally important documents.

    Hieroglyphs followed soon afterwards, and indeed some of the earliest examples are carved in stone, but they are also small bits of text in the middle of a decorative design, and there are also similar examples that are painted on pottery, which would only require one hand.

    Chinese oracle bone script were, like the name says, carved in softer material (bone).

    And I don't know whether we know on what surface Maya script started, and I suspect that if it was done on perishable materials we'll never know, because the climate there is quite different from that of Egypt.

    And the direction of writing of those early examples varied wildly, even in the same script, with left to right, right to left, top to bottom and even boustrophedon.

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  • CelloMom On CarsCelloMomOnCars@mastodon.social
    Jun 13, 2026, 11:18 AM

    @valhalla @deborahh

    The Sumerians, then the Egyptians, but it's the Phoenicians or the Etruscans who first had an alphabet* as we know it, and they wrote right to left. Then the Greeks adopted the letters but wrote them backwards, left to right.

    superprof.com/blog/why-are-sem

    Romans (much later) also wrote on wax tablets for everyday notes. I mean, who had time to carve everything in stone?

    *The word 'alphabet' is from their first two letters, aleph or alif (cow), and beth (house)

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  • Elena ``of Valhalla''valhalla@social.gl-como.it
    Jun 13, 2026, 12:11 PM

    @CelloMomOnCars @deborahh afaik the proto-sinaitic script was still written in both directions (including changing direction on alternate lines), and so were the early greek and italic (including etruscan) texts, settling on a standard direction happened a bit later, and it ended up being the opposite direction between Semitic languages and Greek + the linguistic mess that was Italy.

    I'm not sure whether there has been any research on why it happened this way, or if it was a random chance (which sounds pretty likely, considering that the writing mediums were pretty similar in both places).

    boustrophedic and right-to-left inscriptions from the pre-roman iron age are quite common in the museums of northern Italy, even if the alphabet they were using was definitely derived from the Greek one (probably after going through the Etruscans, as they were the local prestige civilization at the time)

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  • CelloMom On CarsCelloMomOnCars@mastodon.social
    Jun 13, 2026, 12:39 PM

    @valhalla @deborahh

    In both directions on alternate lines!

    It shows you there's more than one way to skin this cat.

    Also, seems there was a lot of experimentation going on before somebody banged on the table and prescribed a standard.

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  • Elena ``of Valhalla''valhalla@social.gl-como.it
    Jun 13, 2026, 12:29 PM

    @CelloMomOnCars @deborahh also, wikipedia tells me that the oldest find of a probably-wax-tablet was in a shipwreck of the coast of contemporary Turkey from the 14th century BC, which is pretty cool!

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uluburun…

    (probably. after a few millennia in the sea I think there was no wax left on the tablet, and I have no access to the article to read the details and see how confident they are that it was actually one)

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