How Nature Inspired the Alphabet

[Liffrea]

32,000 years ago, ancient humans gathered in a cave in Lascaux, France, where, by firelight, they created the first hand-drawn forms--scenes depicting man's relationship with the natural world.

The favorite subject in those first drawings was the ancient ox, so impressive in stature and strength, that it was deified by our earliest ancestors. This reverence for nature remained as civilizations formed, and with it, written language. It is no wonder then that subtly hidden within our alphabet today lie the remnants of these ancient forms--many of which reflect the earliest relationships between man and nature. To find them, you just have to look a little closer.

http://ow.ly/16NWIP

[Lenny]

Interesting...

This one seemed to be a stretch--

..but maybe true nonetheless.
The rest are pretty straightforward and believable.

believable

Except this bit of Freudian nonsense --

The best guess as to what the pictogram of the letter 'I', presented horizontally, is that of a penis

[Osweo]

This one seemed to be a stretch--

..but maybe true nonetheless.

Oh, definitely.

It's odd that the author doesn't mention the names of the letters in the Levantine languages. I believe aleph translates directly as 'ox'. Beth is of course 'house', as in Bethel - the 'House of God' and so on.

Except this bit of Freudian nonsense --

Hehe, but next time somebody says 'not one iota', you can amuse yourself with a direct mental translation... I wonder what the Hebrew name for the letter behind 'I' is....?

Hmmm, there's a pdf here;
http://www.divineviewpoint.com/hebrew_alphabet.pdf
but the vowels were a Greek invention, using spare Phoenician letters that stood for consonants unnecessary in Greek.... It might be teth - here translated as 'relationship'....

Here it's translated as 'snake' though....

Well, the link isn't TOO obscure...

OH! No, sorry! Yod gave us iota, and means 'hand'.

See here for more translations in detail.

This was annoying in the original article, though;

The earliest symbol for the letter 'N' was that of a snake or serpent in its distinctive crawl. Semitic people in Egypt are responsible for the shape in later alphabets. Their word for 'snake' began with the letter

I hope it doesn't refer to the Egyptians themselves, who are not Semitic speakers at all. It could refer to the Sinai peoples, now in the Arab Republic of Egypt, but this should be made clearer.