How were writting systems developed? How we decided the characters and their meanings?
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Writing appears to have been developed separately multiple times and since the people who started the whole thing didn’t have writing to write down what happened, we don’t know for sure.
It appears that things started out with pictures that represented things, which over time evolved into more and more abstract symbols.
Some writing systems like Chinese still use the method of symbols having meaning today.
Others eventually evolved to have symbols represent the sounds associated with the word in a spoken language and you get syllabries and abjads and alaphabets, were symbols represent sallable, just consonants or consonants and vowels.
With Chinese characters you can sometimes still see the thing they represent.
With our modern alphabet, you have to trace the characters a long way back before they look like anything. For example the letter A can be traced back the the greek Alpha and the Hebrew Aleph and it older and older languages until you end up going from what looks like a sideways A to something that looks like an Ox head.
Charcters just got adapted to be easier to write over time and as new people adopted it with different languages they repurposed some, modified others and added new ones to fit their need.
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