[.ca] Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (ISBN 052158907X)

nice, unconvincing at points:
The book is overall nice. There are two kinds of things here: facts and theoretical speculation. I enjoy the facts part: a lot of beautifull sketched letters as found on tablets, a lot of definitions of the various systems of which alphabetic writting (invented by the Greeks) represented the most advanced form. Let me say where I find the book incomplete. The Author convincingly states that there is only one alphabet (the Greek) of which both Latin and Cyrilik are different versions. He also nicely describes pre-alphabetic writting systems developed in the Middle East and Greece. He speaks of revolutions in writting: lexigraphy, logography, syllabography and alphabet. On pg 71 he mentions 3 syllabographies: Phoenician, Cypriote, Linear B. Then he claims the symbols of the Greek alphabet came from Phoenician writting. But one can the simple question: Linear B was a syllabography older than the Phoenician syllabography. It was encoding Greek and it was evolution of another wriiting system found in Greece Linear A. Since the author acknowledges that the alphabet was discovered by the Greeks to encode better the Greek language why should they adapt Phoenician letters and not the Linear B letters (since Phoenician script and Linear B have analogous capabilities)?? why should a Greek (inventor of the alphabet) would not use the symbols of Linear B? In fact one can claim (equally persuasively) that the phoenician letters came from Linear B rather than the other way around. It is really strange the notion the author (and other) try to persuade us for: A region of high culture (Greece) took symbols of another culture (ignoring its own which are equally good or better) in order to advance its script! I do not think that many people with common sense would accept this; then why it is advertized by University Professors? The answer to this question says much about the quality standards of current ancient Greece Scholarship. The author makes a comparison of Phoenician with Greek-alphabet symbols (as he ought to do been a good scintist). but NOWHERE in the text is to be fould a comparison between Linear A , Linear B , Alphabet. The latter is the evolution of the Greek writting system which could be the natural thing to expect. Today it is well known that the roots of the Greek civilization are much older than previously thought. But in opposition to the hard sciences, where new things are immediately integrated into textbooks, monoraphs etc, we face in classical studies the unfortunate situation that the level of modern textbooks are that of the pre-War II years. Perhaps the author has not the knowlewdge to describe the above mentioned evolution of Greek writting, but he should (for scientific integrity) make clear that this important task if undertaken could lead to different conclusions than the ones he tries to persuade us (with no success though). In conclusion the book has nice information about the alphabet; VERY good in this respect; but the author is not an expert in the evolution of the Greek writing and perhaps he ought to learn a bit more about pre-alphabetic Greek writting. He might be surprised of what he finds!