Writing systems, alphabets

A global exploration of the many writing systems that are on the verge of vanishing, and the stories and cultures they carry with them. If something is important, we write it down. Yet 85% of the world’s writing systems are on the verge of vanishing – not granted official status, not taught in schools, discouraged and dismissed. When a culture is forced to abandon its traditional script, everything it has written for hundreds of years – sacred texts, poems, personal correspondence, legal documents, the collective experience, wisdom and identity of a people – is lost. This atlas is about those writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them.