Ideagrams

Ideagrams were quite an improvement on Pictograms because they had an image or picture to represent each idea, a seperate symbol each exisiting on its own representing something. The ancient Egyptians lay claim to this concept first, as it is shown in their Hieroglyphical written language, but the Chinese weren't too far behind either. However, unlike the Egyptian language (which is much closer to an alphabet than the Chinese characters), the written form of Chinese had literally thousands of symbols, each standing for a word. This might allow for more versatile writing styles and formats, but as it was, it was a terribly hard thing to completely master.

By way of comparision, the Hieroglyphics system (invented around 30,000 BC) expanded much on the ideagram idea (the irony!) and not only had each "character" represent something, but also had syllables attached to it, becoming much like the English alphabet we are familar with these days. And because cross-culture learning was a fair bit of a problem back then, things took a long time to travel from one country to another, and during each of these "hops", they added in a bit of their own inventions. And so it was that the Egyptians lent the Phoenicians their idea, whom then "sold" the idea to the Greeks, and after those philosophers argued enough about the entire system, a decent alphabetical system was derived.