3. The world's major writing systems

图标从上到下依次为：拉丁文，斯拉夫字母，韩文，其他字母，阿拉伯文，其他希伯来字母，梵文，其他元音附标文字，音节文字，象形文字（译注：非语言学专业，有误请指教）

Click to enlarge. (Wikimedia Commons)

This map is a reminder that the world's divisions and commonalities go much deeper than national borders. It also helps to tell the stories of a few major events that still shape the globe, the echoes of which you can see in almost every map on this page:European colonialism, the Arabic-speakingIslamic conquestsof the 7th century, the Russian expansions of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the (still-ongoing!) unifications of India and China.

这张地图提醒了我们世界的不同与共性，要比国界更加深远。它还协助讲述了依旧塑造着全球格局的一些主要事件。几乎在这一页每一张地图上，你都能看到这些事件的余威：欧洲殖民主义，7世纪讲阿拉伯语的伊斯兰的征服，19和20世纪俄罗斯的扩张，以及（依然持续着的！）印度以及中国的统一。