One of the world's ancient alphabets could flash on the screen of cellphones in the third-most-populous nation in Africa, easing communications for millions who can only read and write the ...

An ancient Middle Eastern civilization that developed an early alphabet spread its culture far and wide—but not its DNA, finds a 23 April Nature study of hundreds of ancient human genomes.

While early writing systems emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt over 5,000 years ago, they used symbols rather than a bona fide alphabet, which appeared significantly later, around 1800 BCE.