The Alphabet

[maestro15]

I take a Chinese 3 Course (中文三) in school. My instructor gave us a historic lesson on the characters, and how they came to be. For example, for elephant:(象Xiang) looks somewhat like an elephant; and that is due to the language being derived from prehistoric Asian pictures and paintings. It makes sense to think that languages should naturally derive themselves from pictures or symbols from pre-litereate societies.

My Question is: How did the Greeks, Germanic societies, Latin, and other advanced languages come up with the Letter/Alphabet system as apposed to words that look like something? or who came up with it?

Thanks for reading