Mother of all alphabets?

In the 10th century B.C., just south of Jerusalem, someone carved his ABC's on a limestone boulder. Last July, archaeologists at the site in central Israel, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in an ancient building. After an analysis, they concluded that it was the earliest known version of the Hebrew alphabet and a major milestone in the history of writing. If the archaeologists are correct, the stone bears the oldest reliably dated example of an abecedary--the letters of the alphabet written out in their traditional sequence. "All successive alphabets in the world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit," says Ron E. Tappy, an archaeologist at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the dig's director. Two lines of letters--apparently the 22 symbols of the Hebrew alphabet--were on one face of a 40-pound stone that may have been placed in the building to ward off evil. Lawrence E. Stager, a Harvard archaeologist, says the pottery styles found at Tel Zayit "fit perfectly with the 10th century [B.C.], which makes this an exceedingly rare inscription." Stager adds that more extensive radiocarbon dating will be needed to establish its age.