Re: World's first computer may be even older than thought

On Aug 3, 3:55 pm, Dennis <tsalagi18NOS...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Keith Willshaw wrote:
Someone who's into epigraphy told me that cuneiform script has no
living successors. The script, not necessarily the format.

There was a shortage of pointy sticks in the era of the Arabs.

        ???  How do they motivate camels then?  

        I was going to say that the alphabet had been invented by their time,
but Old Persian and Ugaritic use cuneiform versions of the alphabet.  The
real issue is that the Arabs wrote on media other than clay.  

        Writing fits the medium most of the time.  The runic futhark script
with its straight lines makes sense for carving on wood and stone with
knives.  OTOH, the highly cursive scripts of South India and Burma/Myanmar
are intended for use on palm leaves, where the curved strokes are less
likely to split the leaves.  

The Arabs adopted the Nabatean dialect of Aramaic, the
same root as Phoenician and Hebrew.

        Yes, and its use for writing the Qur'an firmly cemented it into Arab
culture - that and the art of calligraphy, encourages by Islam's ban on
images.  

Dennis

The wiki and every cite that copies it say the last cuneiform text was
an astronomical text written in 75AD. The language of this text is not
a given.

Keith is correct that Aramaic and its alphabet gradually replaced the
cuneiform system.
.

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