The origins of the apostrophe may be traced back to ancient Greece, when

a diacritical symbol known as the "apostrophos" was employed to indicate

missing letters in shortened words. Rather than being a separate
punctuation mark, it was part of a contraction symbol known as a "crasis."
When the final vowel or syllable of a word was omitted to make a
contraction, the apostrophos was used. Geoffroy tory introduced it to the
French in 1529, and it was used in place of a vowel to indicate elision. It
was commonly substituted for a final "e".
From the 16th century, following the French practice the English people
used the apostrophe when a vowel was omitted either because of
incidental elision(I’m-I am ) Or because the letter no longer presented a
sound (lov’d-loved). The English retained many inflections that were not
pronounced as syllables notably verbs ending in “s” and nouns ending with
“es” which ether marked plurals or possession.

The role
It has 2 roles.
1. possessive apostrophe: is used to show that something belongs to
someone or something else.
a) singular nouns: the apostrophe is placed before the "s" at the end of the
noun.
b) plural nouns: ending in "s," the apostrophe is placed after the "s" to
indicate possession.
2. Contraction: the apostrophe is used to show that we are omitting some
letters of two separated words and forming one. (don’t)