Each column is one letter, traced top to bottom through seven script stages. Dotted lines mean descent by continuous scribal transmission — not reinvention.

• Hover any form for what it is, how it links to the stage above, and a citable source.
• Click a column to isolate one letter's lineage; click again to release.
• Proto-Sinaitic forms are schematic drawings after the Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi el-Hol inscriptions — the script is not in Unicode, so no font renders it. Every other form is set in a real typeface over its Unicode codepoint.
• Archaic Greek cells use standard codepoints as proxies; real epigraphic forms varied by city and by writing direction.

Form and premise after the Evolution of the Alphabet chart by UsefulCharts, whose grid of graphemes against dated script stages this follows. What is added here is per-cell sourcing and attestation, the uncial stage, and the two-case story that the lowercase forms carry.

Datings are conventional approximations. This is a six-letter working slice of a full alphabet chart; sources per cell appear in the tooltips. Download renders the poster at print resolution entirely in your browser.

Elsewhere: The Same Idea · The Missing N · Flat-Foot · Polite Company · The Second Alphabet · Twenty-Two Letters · Brahmi's Daughters · The Same Word · Heartwood · Every Language Family