The Cretan Script Family Includes the Carian Alphabet

Authors

Peter Z. Revesz, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

MATEC Web of Conferences 125, 05019 (2017)

Comments

© The Authors

Open access

DOI: 10.1051/matecconf/201712505019

Abstract

The Cretan Script Family is a set of related writing systems that have a putative origin in Crete. Recently, Revesz [11] identified the Cretan Hieroglyphs, Linear A, Linear B, the Cypriot syllabary, and the Greek, Old Hungarian, Phoenician, South Arabic and Tifinagh alphabets as members of this script family and using bioinformatics algorithms gave a hypothetical evolutionary tree for their development and presented a map for their likely spread in the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas. The evolutionary tree and the map indicated some unknown writing system in western Anatolia to be the common origin of the Cypriot syllabary and the Old Hungarian alphabet. This paper argues that the missing link may be some ancestor of the Carian alphabet because several Carian alphabet letters show an intermediate stage between the corresponding Cypriot syllabary signs and the Old Hungarian letters.