It is neither necessary nor proper to enter now upon any prolonged account of the origin, of alphabetic writing.  There is, however, propriety, if not necessity, for the present writer, when making any remarks under this heading and under some others in this paper indicating special lines of research, to disclaim all pretension to being a Sinologue or Egyptologist, or even profoundly versed in Mexican antiquities.  His partial and recently commenced studies only enable him to present suggestions for the examination of scholars.  These suggestions may safely be introduced by the statement that the common modern alphabetic characters, coming directly from the Romans, were obtained by them from the Greeks, and by the latter from the Phoenicians, whose alphabet was connected with that of the old Hebrew.  It has also been of late the general opinion that the whole family of alphabets to which the Greek, Latin, Gothic, Runic, and others belong, appearing earlier in the Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew, had its beginning in the ideographic pictures of the Egyptians, afterwards used by them to express sounds.  That the Chinese, though in a different manner from the Egyptians, passed from picture writing to phonetic writing, is established by delineations still extant among them, called ku-w[)a]n, or “ancient pictures,” with which some of the modern written characters can be identified.  The ancient Mexicans also, to some extent, developed phonetic expressions out of a very elaborate system of ideographic picture writing.  Assuming that ideographic pictures made by ancient peoples would be likely to contain representations of gesture signs, which subject is treated of below, it is proper to examine if traces of such gesture signs may not be found in the Egyptian, Chinese, and Aztec characters.  Only a few presumptive examples, selected from a considerable number, are now presented in which the signs of the North American Indians appear to be included, with the hope that further investigation by collaborators will establish many more instances not confined to Indian signs.

A typical sign made by the Indians for no, negation, is as follows:  The hand extended or slightly curved is held in front of the body, a little to the right of the median line; it is then carried with a rapid sweep a foot or more farther to the right. (Mandan and Hidatsa I.)

One for none, nothing, sometimes used for simple negation, is also given:  Throw both hands outward toward their respective sides from the breast. (Wyandot I.)

With these compare the two forms of the Egyptian character for no, negation, Fig. 118, taken from Champollion, Grammaire Egyptienne, Paris, 1836, p. 519.

[Illustration:  Fig. 118.]

No vivid fancy is needed to see the hands indicated at the extremities of arms extended symmetrically from the body on each side.

[Illustration:  Fig. 119.]