I remember reading somewhere that all European alphabets* derive from... Phoenician? Canaanite? Something like that. Which was a writing system derived from Heiroglyphs but with the innovation of having symbols depicting consonants instead of words. Is that correct? Could someone explain this with more detail?
*And, actually, Middle Eastern and African alphabets too. Possibly also Indian, but that was more contraversial, from what I remember. But I'm trying to narrow the question.
The Greek, Latin (itself derived from a form of Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets are indeed derived from Phoenician script, which was in turn ultimately derived from Egyptian Hieroglyphs (I assume this is what you meant, since hieroglyphs are generally now considered a type of writing system rather than a specific writing system). Proto-Sinaitic, sometimes known as Old Canaanite, is generally considered the intermediary step between Phoenician and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Egyptian hieroglyphs use a combination of logographic (a symbol or character representing a specific word or phrase), syllabic (each character representing a specific syllable) and alphabetic (each character representing a phoneme or basic sound) elements. It is an incredibly complex writing system. After all, there is a reason it was not deciphered until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
How exactly P-S evolved from Egyptian hieroglyphs is a matter of considerable debate, largely due to the limited number of surviving examples of the script. However, it appears that P-S relies more on the use of alphabetic elements, while also retaining certain hieroglyphs within the writing system. There is so much we don't know about P-S so it is extremely difficult to say for certain how it relates to both hieroglyphs (its ancestor) and Phoenician (its descendent).
In any case, the Phoenician alphabet represented a substantial development from P-S. It is what is known as an 'abjad', an alphabetic system in which each symbol or character represents a specific consonant. Importantly, however, the vowels are not specified with the writing system. The Phoenician alphabet has a total of 22 characters, each representing a phoneme. Contrast this with Egyptian hieroglyphs, which contains more than 1000 individual symbols. This simplification meant it was both simpler to read/write and easier to learn. This, combined with the huge reach of Phoenicia's maritime trading network, ensured its spread throughout the Mediterranean. It was then adapted and assimilated into local writing systems.
It was in one such system, Greek, that a significant development established the basis of what might be considered the modern alphabet of Western Europe. The lack of specified vowels within the Phoenician alphabet led to the development of distinct symbols representing individual vowels to complement the use of Phoenician consonants within the Greek writing system. Latin and earlier Italic alphabets such as Etruscan are derived from Greek via the Euboean (also known as Cumae) alphabet, which was used in some Greek colonies on the Italian peninsula.
Cyrillic, in its earliest form, was artificially created by the brothers Cyril and Methodius in the 9th Century CE in order to translate the Bible and other Christian texts into Slavic languages for the purposes of conversion. It draws heavily from the Greek alphabet.
Aramaic, the ancient ancestor of modern Arabic script, is also a local adaption of Phoenician.
I hope this helps to explain how we got from hieroglyphs to the modern Western alphabet!