Practice question · Select all that apply
What follows from an alphabet that ordinary people can learn?
Hints
- The consequence is accessibility, not precision.
- The older system could record just as much.
Show the answer
- A. The erosion of a monopoly held by a professional scribal class
- B. Laws that can be posted publicly and read by those they govern
- C. Contracts and letters written by merchants themselves
Why
Not precision, accessibility. Cuneiform could record anything the alphabet could; what it could not do was let a merchant write his own letter without hiring a professional.
Practise The Iron Age and the End of Prehistory
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More questions on The Iron Age and the End of Prehistory
- Complete the statement about the threshold.
- Sort each statement: supported, or an instance of technological determinism?
- Why is calling prehistory "the prologue to human history" a mistake about proportion?
- Why is "iron caused the fall of aristocracies" a claim to handle carefully?
- Why was the Phoenician alphabet as consequential as iron?
- The boundary between prehistory and history marks a real change in how people lived.
- The Phoenician alphabet had about 22 signs where cuneiform had hundreds. What did that reduction actually…