Good observations. It's also interesting to look back 2K years at the kingpin Eurasian languages for evidence of definite/indefinite articles. From right to lef

Good observations. It's also interesting to look back 2K years at the kingpin Eurasian languages for evidence of definite/indefinite articles. From right to left, ancient Chinese (probably) lacked the qualifier but was exposed to its existence via the silk road (which used the lingua franca Aramaic which had them) and also through exposure to the Greek Buddhist colonies in North India (ancient Greek had a definite article). Same holds for Sanskrit in ancient India, which lacks any definite article. Same for old Latin. And Greece was subordinate to Rome, which only tolerated Greek as a language of the intelligentsia. Curious how an appendage in ancient secondary tongues became so mainstream in so many dominant contemporary languages.