OP made a specific claim - words represent an evolutionary progression from hieroglyphs, are therefore better, and we should go forward and not back.

I see nothing in cultural memetic theorizing (which I summarized as “culture is accretive and driven by social dynamics”) that supports that.

The term “cultural evolution” is highly unfortunate as it is one more example of humanities folk borrowing science terminology in a bid to coin some evocative word salad that will sound relevant and scientific.