Videos

Writing... awesome technology or unnatural intrusion? Why did humans start writing? What would our world be like without writing? Here begins the tale of Thoth and Thamus, two legendary Egyptians...

Writing started out as pictures? Yep! Journey to a cave full of pictographs in ancient France and see how it all began. You just took Thoth's Pill. Now watch as early cave paintings...

Watch prehistoric pictures turn into written words as ancient civilizations around the world learn to write for the very first time! You took Thoth's Pill. Now your journey continues...

Watch ancient Sumerians figure out how to use pictures to write sounds for the first time in history. See why the Egyptians disagree with their approach. Meaning writing (logographs...

Watch this ancient Chinese scribe figure out how to use a fixed set of characters to write limitless words in his language. How? By combining meaning writing (logographs) and...

Maya glyphs aren't just Mesoamerican eye candy. They're a working writing system! Unlike the thousands of logograms encountered in your journey so far, the Maya syllabary lets...

From Egyptian hieroglyphs to your alphabet, watch these miners turn fancy symbols into simple scratches that were all about the sounds. First marvel at hieroglyphic inscriptions in...

Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic evolved a unique way to write vowels... with consonants! See how in this episode of Thoth's Pill: an Animated History of...

Not a syllabary. Not quite an alphabet. Totally Indian. Watch Ashoka discuss his land's exotic script and tell you his plans for this unique alphasyllabary. This episode...

The Korean alphabet is better than yours. Meet the king who invented it and watch him work his linguistic magic in this chapter in the history of writing. You wake up...