Normally researcher will make a statistical distribution and compared it with the existing deciphered alphabets for example the most popular is the yet to be deciphered Indus script against the popular Egyption script or Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Indus script research findings on it being a script was so controversial that the researcher had a death threat upon him based on the discovery.
I think the OP article author is wrong by claiming it's the oldest while it should be the Indus script but perhaps they considered the latter as symbols like Chinese characters not strictly alphabets [1].
[1] Indus script:
Personally I'm not convinced that it's alphabetic writing: it's four cylinders with some markings on them, supposedly in an unknown language (convenient!), that appears to have had zero influence on and zero influence from its surrounding region. For the two claimants to the oldest alphabets — the Indus script [1], and the Proto-Sinaitic script [2] — there is ample evidence of broad usage and influence from existing cultures: the Proto-Sinaitic script developed as simplified hieroglyphics used to communicate with Canaanite slaves [3] in Egypt and was the origin of (probably) all modern alphabetic systems, and the Indus script developed from earlier potter's marks over hundreds of years and has nearly a thousand years of archeological evidence, although there is some debate as whether it qualifies as an alphabet. This appears unrelated to any existing writing system in the region, and — if it was an alphabet — appears to have had no subsequent influence on any other writing system ever made. If archeologists are suspicious of even the Indus script, how on earth do these qualify?
We have plenty of examples of pottery with markings on it that aren't alphabets. Cuneiform obviously, but also simply tradesman marks like the predecessors to the Indus script. What makes this "seem like alphabetic writing" as opposed to any of the other kinds of clay markings we've seen at the time? There are only four objects bearing the markings, with nothing else to compare against, in a supposedly "unknown" language!
If this really is an alphabet: what did it develop from? Where are the cultures who used it? And why did no one in the region ever use anything like it again?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
> If this really is an alphabet: what did it develop from? Where are the cultures who used it? And why did no one in the region ever use anything like it again?
All good points, and my sense of it also is that it's pre-writing, but it might be that additional material just hasn't yet been discovered. Linear A and PS are known from a very, very few inscriptions.
The skeptics also provided similar arguments as yours against the idea of Egyption hieroglyphics as syllabic/alphabets until they found the venerable Rosetta Stone, and the rest is history. We just need another Rosetta Stone but for Indus script.
This does not make GP incorrect though. It just means we really cannot know for sure how the writing system works until we have enough information to decipher the inscriptions.
I don't take beef with the possibility of an earlier alphabet that predates the Proto-Canaanite alphabet — that is entirely plausible. But I think the article is overselling the story. The evidence is not very strong at this point, and I although I can be wrong, I suspect it can never be with if we remain with just four very short inscriptions without external context.
It is important to clarify the vast difference between this and the decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. I think the myth and magic of the Rosetta stone is overemphasized in popular culture, so just a few points of difference between the Egyptian Hieroglyphs and scripts like the Indus Valley Script or Linear A.
- Of course, to start with we did have the Rosetta Stone, and we have no equivalent for these scripts. But the Rosetta Stone was rediscovered in 1799, while Champollion provided the first phonetic interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs only two and half decades later, in 1822. But even after Champollion's famous achievement, we weren't able to read most hieroglyphic texts yet! Champollion didn't realize that many phonetic hieroglyphs represent not just a single consonant, but often two or three different consonants! It took a couple of more decades until we Egyptian was fully deciphered.
- We knew exactly which culture and language the Egyptian Hieroglyphs belonged to. More importantly, we had a vast wealth of external historical sources about this culture that we could read: mostly in Greek, Hebrew, Roman and Aramaic. From these sources we knew the names of Egyptian kings that we could expect to find in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and we knew enough about Egyptian culture, religion and history to often guess what the texts would be talking about. This is not anywhere nearly as true for the Indus Valley Script! Since we don't know who their kings were, we cannot use the names of kings as a highly verifiable way to test the phonetic writing hypothesis.
- We had a vast quantity of Hieroglyphs inscriptions. There are fewer attested Indus Valley Script inscriptions, but the number should be enough if we just had other external clues.
- Egyptian still had a (barely-)living descendant (Coptic) at the time Champollion and other scholars were working on its decipherment. Coptic priests and AFAIK even native speakers have provided a lot of help them in understanding how the Egyptian language they were trying to decipher might sound and work.
> Personally I'm not convinced that it's alphabetic writing
What is their evidence and argument for it?