The point I expected this page to say that it doesn't really mention is that there's a fairly clear progression in the development of writing. Early writing systems all seem to start with some sort of pictography. This runs into the problem that not every word can be represented with a clear pictogram, and the solution ends up being some sort of phonetic punning mechanism (i.e., the rebus principle). Even Chinese han…
With regard to vowel-centric versus consonant-centric languages, English tends to be consonant-centric, and that's partly why our spelling is difficult. For example, "flutter" could be spelled "fluttr": we don't need the 2nd vowel and thus wouldn't have to guess whether it's spelled "fluttur", "fluttor", etc. English could use a refactoring. Examples: http://wiki.c2.com/?RefactorEnglish
But vowels do matter in English. Consider the following words that differ only in the vowel they use: bat, bait, bit, bot, bite, boat, boot, butt, bet, beat, bout. Furthermore, all of those words refer to very different things. Semitic languages are based on a triconsonantal scheme, where three consonants define a root, and the choice of vowels implies inflection. Dropping the vowels in Semitic languages does not impair meaning all that much.