Anywho, I wanted to share the origin of the alphabet. Wikipedia also has a nice article on the history of the alphabet. To be honest, I can't verify any of that, since archaeology was never my strength (I prefer written history instead). You would think some ancient writers would write about the history of writing, but no... archaeologists have to do the hard work to get answers.
Which reminds me of the subject of historiography, the study of history. Or more accurately, the study of how people record and study history. The first historiographer that I know of was Herodotus of ancient Greece. Herodotus wrote "the histories," the oldest surviving history book. I believe Herodotus was one of the first Greeks to conclude that the Caspian Sea is a lake, and not a true sea at all. He also believed it was possible to sail directly between India and Greece, simply by going around Lybia. As it turns out, he was mostly correct, except that the African continent is much larger than he ever imagined.
He made a number of big claims in the histories that took a long time to verify. He described a Scythian city near modern-day Ukraine that was a hundred times larger than Troy (it wasn't until the 1970s that someone was able to prove he was telling the truth). He mentions giant ants in India (he was probably referring to marmots). He also boldly claimed that Etruscans (who lived in Italy at the time) were descended from Turkish nomads. Most ancient Romans scoffed at this claim, but DNA evidence has proven Herodotus to be correct.
Of course, some things are still believed to be false. Herodotus mentioned Phoenixes living in Egypt, which has never been proven. However, given how many of his other amazing claims turned out to be true, it may turn out that at some later date an archaeologist will uncover phoenix fossils in Egypt.
Here's a recreation of a map Herodotus made of the world as he knew it:
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