I don't believe things need a long historical lineage to "work" at all, although it may lend some degree of inherent "power" to something if it does have such a lineage. A large part of what makes something magical or not is the importance your own psyche gives it. If one wanted to work with, say, Hylian script from the Zelda series or Tolkien's version of the Runes it would still "work" in some capacity, as those worlds are "real" in a mystical sense insofar as people make them "real."
Once upon a time, a LONG time ago, scripts such as Hebrew, Greek, Runic, etc were "new" things with no ancient lineage behind them. I'd imagine they still "worked" for magicians then as well. But I do think that once a thing has been viewed as magical and sacred by so many people for so long, the thing in and of itself has some sort of built-up "power" that it didn't have at first due to the accumulated thoughts and desires projected onto them from so many psyches over the ages. Perhaps also due to all that psychic energy STILL being focused on it from all those past psyches that are now disincarnate.