Scientific and cultural-spiritual activity has long been the most important sphere of the life of human societies. However, it could not have existed without the main means of communication - language. One of the greatest in the history of mankind was Latin. It created the famous literary and scientific memos of the ancient world. Latin letters and language dominated the environment.
European intelligentsia, pundits and the spiritual sphere many years after the fall of ancient civilization. Today we can feel their influence in quite age-appropriate sciences. Roman words and phrases with enviable constancy appear in medicine, history, philosophy, mathematics. In our everyday life, even in Russia, we observe hundreds of inscriptions in foreign languages every day. As a rule, this is English, which, it is no exaggeration to say, today dominates the
cultural and informational space of the planet. However, this was not always the case. English became international only at the sunset of the colonial era. For many centuries before this, just Latin served as a means of communication between different peoples. Moreover, all modern Western European languages (and partially Central European, as well as the peoples of both American continents), without exception, contain Latin letters in their written form. After all, all the alphabets of the Romanesque and Germanic modern peoples are the direct descendants of ancient writing. Yes, and the languages themselves are a synthesis of those that are characteristic of the late Roman period and local barbarian dialects with a smaller (as in Italian or Spanish) or greater (as in English or German) share of the latter.
Origin of the alphabetBut how did the Latin letters themselves appear? What kind of ancestors did they actually have? If you dig even deeper into the antiquity of centuries, it turns out that this alphabet, in essence, comes from the ancient Greek. The latter, in turn, was the direct heir to the Phoenician. However, the direct evolution of how Latin letters were formed on the basis of ancient Greek writing is not yet possible to trace. There is also a hypothesis that the process of their formation was significantly influenced by Etruscan writing. And the assumption is very popular among ancient historians, since the Etruscan cities really dominated the cultural and spiritual life of the Italian peninsula in the pre-Roman period (and the first Roman kings were Etruscans by origin). In addition, it is interesting to note that the Etruscan writing itself, despite the fact that archaeologists restored its appearance, is still undecrypted. As for the Latin script itself, the first discovered inscriptions are dated to the 7th century BC. This alphabet originally included 21 letters, later 23 were used in the classical period of Roman development
culture. Then the
Roman legions claimed their own civilizational model on three continents.
Latin letters and numbers
And you should remember that, in addition to the famous alphabet, the Italians gave the world a system of calculus. It was also used for a long period, however, unlike letters, it had a formidable opponent. He became the Arab model of calculus. It was the latter that proved its great convenience and effectiveness, first in the east, and then in the west. The use of Roman numerals today often looks more like a tribute to traditions than a truly rational necessity.