ABSTRACT
The global search for the earliest forms of writing-and thus for the most ancient documented languages-should be distinguished from the ideological, or utopian quest for an ‘Edenic’ or ‘Adamic’, ‘pre-Babel’ language. Whereas the latter endeavour can be justifiably discredited because of its mythical and ethnocentric nature, the former appears to constitute a legitimate scientific inquiry-both in view of a history of successful decipherments which have consistently pushed back in time the earliest scriptural evidence, and with respect to the convergence of a set of arguments, tending to establish the plausibility of much earlier beginnings than currently accepted.
