Orthography (continued 1)

From the perspective of the polygenesis theory, most scholars recognize that writing systems (orthography) may have independently originated and developed in at least four ancient civilizations in the world: Mesopotamia civilization (Sumerian characters), Egypt civilization (hieroglyphs), Mesoamerica civilization in the lowlands of southern Mexico and northern Central America (Mayan hieroglyphics), and Chinese civilization (Chinese characters).  These ancient languages that were pictographs (hieroglyphics) have ​​evolved into two different major types of language systems of alphabetic letters and ideographic characters.  Sumerian scripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Mayan scripts have evolved into alphabetic letters. Only Chinese characters have kept their original pictographic nature with ideographic features as we call “ideographic language”. Most of the alphabetic languages so called phonographic languages are descendants of Ancient Greek which originated from Sumerian scripts and/or Egyptian hieroglyphics. Not until the mid-20th century was the Mayan scripts (hieroglyphics) deciphered. Proto-Mayan languages were pictographic, many linguists think Mayan languages are alphabetic (phonographic) with the fact that some of them are tonal languages.

(citations needed)

(To be continued)