The alphabet spreads across the Mediterranean
Phoenician traders simplified writing into a small set of consonant signs; Greeks later added vowels, producing the ancestor of most scripts used today.
Humanity
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Chronology
The alphabet spreads across the Mediterranean
Phoenician traders simplified writing into a small set of consonant signs; Greeks later added vowels, producing the ancestor of most scripts used today.
Papermaking crosses into the Islamic world
After the Battle of Talas, papermaking — traditionally via captured Chinese craftsmen, more likely by gradual diffusion — reached Samarkand, then Baghdad, where mills soon supplied an empire's bureaucracy.