Videos

Watch this ancient Chinese scribe figure out how to use a fixed set of characters to write limitless words in his language. How? By combining meaning writing (logographs) and...

Maya glyphs aren't just Mesoamerican eye candy. They're a working writing system! Unlike the thousands of logograms encountered in your journey so far, the Maya syllabary lets...

From Egyptian hieroglyphs to your alphabet, watch these miners turn fancy symbols into simple scratches that were all about the sounds. First marvel at hieroglyphic inscriptions in...

Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic evolved a unique way to write vowels... with consonants! See how in this episode of Thoth's Pill: an Animated History of...

Not a syllabary. Not quite an alphabet. Totally Indian. Watch Ashoka discuss his land's exotic script and tell you his plans for this unique alphasyllabary. This episode...

The Korean alphabet is better than yours. Meet the king who invented it and watch him work his linguistic magic in this chapter in the history of writing. You wake up...

My animation takes you through the birth and evolution of writing. Watch the story of the world's scripts unfold, from the early cave days to modern writing systems. But only if you choose to take Thoth's...

Classical Latin went extinct, yet we still know how to pronounce it. Proof! Take a trip with me back to Catholic school, then back even further to old Rome. We'll see what Latin pronunciation did - and did...

My favorite example of how odd Cuneiform became as it was passed from civilization to civilization. Thanks, rampant Sumerianization! Cuneiform languages took Sumerian very seriously, even...

In this lecture presented at The Explorers Club in New York, BAS Director of Educational Programs Sarah Yeomans examines a recently excavated, as-yet unpublished archaeological site...