<P> Starting in about 3500 B.C., various writing systems developed in ancient civilizations around the world . In Egypt fully developed hieroglyphs were in use at Abydos as early as 3400 B.C. The oldest known alphabet was developed in central Egypt around 2000 B.C. from a hieroglyphic prototype . One hieroglyphic script was used on stone monuments, other cursive scripts were used for writing in ink on papyrus, a flexible, paper - like material, made from the stems of reeds that grow in marshes and beside rivers such as the River Nile . </P> <P> The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto - Canaanite script in around the 11th century BC, which in turn borrowed ideas from Egyptian hieroglyphics . This script was adapted by the Greeks . A variant of the early Greek alphabet gave rise to the Etruscan alphabet, and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet . Other descendants from the Greek alphabet include the Cyrillic script, used to write Russian, among others . </P> <P> The Phoenician system was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew script and also that of Arabic are descended . </P> <P> In China, the early oracle bone script has survived on tens of thousands of oracle bones dating from around 1400 - 1200 B.C. in the Shang Dynasty . Out of more than 2500 written characters in use in China in about 1200 BC, as many as 1400 are identifiable as the source of later standard Chinese characters . </P>

What were the major contributions of several ancient societies to the development of education