Researchers have made another major stride in understanding humanity’s origins of writing. In Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, the earliest known writing system started around 3,000 BCE.

The world’s oldest known writing system may have had its origins in the imagery on decorated cylinders used to denote ownership or record transactions. Some of the symbols on these cylinder seals ...

Early Bronze Age seals from Therasia, Greece may rewrite Aegean history, pointing to the Cyclades as the birthplace of ancient writing.

For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...

The mystery of the origin of human language has captivated scientists for centuries, and it remains one of the most intriguing problems in the field. How did humans manage to progress from simple ...

A new study claims to have identified the first speakers of Indo-European language, which gave rise to English, Sanskrit and hundreds of others. By Carl Zimmer In 1786, a British judge named William ...

The early Greek alphabet was painted on the body of an Attic black-figure cup. Credit: flickr / Dan Diffendale CC BY-SA 2.0 ...