> Here's an analogy for you: It took more than 1000 years (from Babylon to Archaic Greece) for us to go from writing with only consonants to using vowels for the first time.
Where did you get this idea? Babylonian writing fully indicated the vowels. It always has. You're thinking of Egyptian / Hebrew / Arabic writing.
Even where a semitic language was written in cuneiform, vowels were always indicated, because the cuneiform system didn't offer you the option to leave them out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language#Vowels
(Old Persian was written in repurposed cuneiform, and therefore could have omitted the vowels, but didn't.)
Where did you get this idea? Babylonian writing fully indicated the vowels. It always has. You're thinking of Egyptian / Hebrew / Arabic writing.
Even where a semitic language was written in cuneiform, vowels were always indicated, because the cuneiform system didn't offer you the option to leave them out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language#Vowels
(Old Persian was written in repurposed cuneiform, and therefore could have omitted the vowels, but didn't.)