New example of rare Etruscan writing found | Hacker News Reader

New example of rare Etruscan writing found

arstechnica.com

132 pointsPhithagoras32 comments

Great news for Etruscan scholars. I could relate to the point that most of the examples of Etruscan writing they have is from graves or tombs. I worked at the Brooklyn Museum in the 80s and was fascinated, as were most, by Egyptian Heiroglyphics. One of the curators of that department told me that a lot of them were about etiquette, very mundane and boring in subject matter. So I am sure that Etruscan scholars are chomping at the bit to get to this snippet.

From a linguistic point, like Basque, Etruscan seems to have been isolated from the languages spoken around them. The thought is perhaps they were neolithic natives to the area.

I studied the Celts back in the 80s, and Celt really refers to a common culture of shared art, social norms, beliefs and less about race or genetic group. Etruscan as a language was truly different than Celtic and other surrounding language groups. There were so many different bands of Celts in a set time period from Turkey to the UK and Ireland. Comparatively, their women also fought with the men. Celtic Queen Boudicea is a Celt from the British Isles that fought the Romans in 60-65 AD. Celtic women did have positions of status as evidenced by objects found in their tombs.

I can't wait to hear about what the snippet is. I am hoping by longshot it is something more than an honorific, or at least names a God or other figure.

> Great news for Etruscan scholars.

Doesn't sound like a huge group.

BTW, I didn't downvote you, but yes, not a big group at all.

However, you'd be surprised how discoveries sometimes transcend and are bigger than their first impression. It may have a lead to another site, or cultural connection, or linguistic connection, and in a series of unfolding conclusions bring more to the table than imagined.

Then again, it can be another, "You should pass the food to your left at a table"; Such are the ups-and-downs of archaeology!

IIRC a better understanding of Etruscan civilisation would be of major significance to our understanding of the history of ancient Rome, a subject which still seems to have a pretty wide following.

Never said it wasn't, hah. I'm a huge fan of ancient civilizations. Was just making a note

The most interesting part of the story:

But we know almost nothing about their daily lives, in part because most of their writing was recorded on perishable objects like cloth or wax tablets.

Fast Forward 2800 years. What of our Dropbox files, helium filled hard drives, USB thumb drives, DVD-R discs, LTO tapes, etc will survive? Nothing. Because who will be copying all those bits every 5 years into the next latest trend in storage? Nobody.

So all of the insights recorded in the ancient Hacker News community forum will be lost to antiquity. :)

Edit: if perchance this post survives for 2800 years: Hi!

It really can't be overstated; prior to this the amount of writing was basically zilch, and it was almost all grave markers. There wasn't really an expectation that would ever change, so this is a hugely pleasant surprise.

This contains just 70 legible letters and punctuation marks, less than your comment; so there's not really that much potential for understanding new words.

The largest Etruscan body of text we have is 1200 words, it somehow ended up as wrappings for a mummy in Egypt.

I guess it can be overstated.

I guess so!

Half a tweet.

It could be an extraordinarily expressive language, though. Think about what Japanese writers can do with 140 characters.

This made me want to Google 'Japanese entropy bits' and the first hit for me was this paper: http://www.phontron.com/paper/neubig13sam.pdf

"How Much is Said in a Tweet? A Multilingual, Information-theoretic Perspective"

I think what you want is presented in a figure on page 6.

So while Japanese tweeters could express more than English tweeters in the same character count, they generally don't choose to. That's pretty interesting.

Etruscan was written in a predecessor of the Latin alphabet we still use (albeit omitting most vowels), so no, it's not going to have a huge amount of information.

> The largest Etruscan body of text we have is 1200 words, it somehow ended up as wrappings for a mummy in Egypt.

Very cool, I'd never heard of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Linteus

Yes, I didn't get why Annalee Newitz (Ars Technica) wrote: "the stele contains 70 legible letters and punctuation marks" and on the other hand writes: "Scientists believe it will be full of words and concepts they've never encountered before" It makes it out to be some kind of revolutionary Rosetta's Stone, but with 70 characters this is even less then the Faistos Disk of that other enigmatic civilization, the Minoans. I think 'full of words' is a bit overstated - in the Italian reporting it's said that because of the different genre compared to the regular finds we have the scholars will probably encounter some new words (which would be around < 10) probably including the deity of the temple.

When you say zilch, are you saying no know examples in carved stone, you believe no written language was done before these examples, or something else? Further, what evidence leads you to believe these?

For example, some cave paintings cave estimated to at least 37,300 years old and some prehistoric figurines may be as old as 800,000 years.

I believe he's referring specifically to writing in the Etruscan language.

I see, interesting that there's so much interest in Etruscan writing & history.

Not really, it's a precursor to many European cultures

Probably because their territories were conquered by the early Romans and little remained of their history after the Romans overtook those areas... And Romans are seen, along with the non-conquering Greeks, as _the_ pillars of Western Civilization.

It is more accurate to say that Roman culture is a blend of Latin, Etruscan, and (later) Hellenistic culture. The Romans may have finished them off, but not before appropriating massive amounts of culture: the household shrine, burial rites, and the fasces to name a few examples.

It's the mysterious side of Roman culture. Also, the language itself is an isolate and of linguistic interest as language isolates are unusual in Europe.

As someone who is only passing interested in history, I love the Etruscans for their wonderful bronzes.

Here's an example (praying to the art history gods this is an actual Etruscan example and not something else): http://www.royalathena.com/media/Etruscan/Bronze/HFN01.jpg

You can see in their work both the modern world that their culture would help form and the pre-historic tribal past of Europe.

Interesting, I'd have assumed jewelry[0] would have been most interesting, granulated works from 2500 years ago are somewhat impressive[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_jewelry [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_jewelry#/media/File:E...

Those are also cool, for some reason the bronzes have resonated with me since first seeing them.

If you are interested at all in Rome, you are interested in Etruscan.

Fun fact that might pique one's interest: the fasces, which is still widely used to symbolize strength through unity, is believed to be of Etruscan origin.

If only the Emperor Claudius' dictionary survived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius#Scholarly_works_and_t...

Isn't the real question whether we need to update Unicode now?

It doesn't count til somebody finds an Etruscan orgy painting.

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