One 22-letter alphabet became the ancestor of most writing systems on Earth

Phoenician traders spread their consonant-only, 22-letter alphabet across the Mediterranean over a thousand years starting around 1050 BC. The Greeks adapted it and added vowels, and from Greek and Aramaic branches eventually descended Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and the scripts of South and Southeast Asia. A huge share of the world's alphabets trace back to this single Bronze Age trading script.

— Standard epigraphic and historical accounts, Phoenician alphabet — In use c. 1050 BC – 1st century BC