What is the phonetic alphabet?

What is the phonetic alphabet?

As far back as 35, 000 B.C. humans were painting and drawing pictures and symbols on rocks and caves. Much later, by about 3500 B.C, people seem to have hit upon the idea of developing a set of simple symbols or letters which represented the sounds in speech. They could be combined in different ways to make sentences. Such a system is called a phonetic alphabet. The first phonetic alphabet was the cuneiform alphabet developed by the ancient Sumerians.