Mysterious tablet with unknown language unearthed in Georgia
archaeologymag.com
archaeologymag.com
Assuming it's not a forgery, the tablet is unusual in that it appears to be made from locally sourced basalt, but no burials or ancient settlements are known in the area, except for a historic road that was built much later. However, the researchers speculate about a potential ancient settlement in the vicinity of what is now an artificial lake:
>Drone research (Fig. 6) revealed that the area of approximately 4 km2 is divided into geometrical shapes contoured by means of white stones brought from somewhere else. Special, in-depth studies showed entire sets of regular circles that could be burial mounds; the rectangular, semicircular and combined geometric figures could be the remains of houses, defense structures and places of worship.
The caption to one of the photos in the article does mention an inscription on an altar, which goes well with “… and places of worship.”
Though I recall on my first trip there being told that the origin of the Georgian script was the developer of the Armenian script tossing some spaghetti on the wall.
Lots of language isolates and interesting paleohistory. Yenesian will never stop wrinkling my brain.
The Ket language of central Siberia has long been believed to be isolate, but was later classified as a member of the Dene–Yeniseian language family (or at least proposed, afaik this research is still ongoing).
Wild to think about.
This find is about a script in an unknown language.
The question about how old spoken languages are is of course unrelated and can't be answered since it predates history ;-)
Some characters have similarities. The Brahmi 𑀕 may be related to the <Gimel> 𐤂 character in the tablet. Other characters like the "tha" (the O with a dot in the middle), the (, the O, the ) and some others also appear to have common traits.
To find something unrelated would be monumental and would suggest another culture independently invented writing, something known to have happened only a few times (Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, Mayans, maybe the Indus Valley civilization, plus a handful of other disputed instances).
edit: dang, looks like I'll have to change my password again
So they know jack shit. Just as likely to be for accounting purposes, like a large number of Sumerian tablets.
https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir...
Who thought that was a good idea for kids? I mean, it was an awesome show, but still.
“The Iberian Union is a historiographical term used to describe the personal union of the Kingdom of Portugal with the Monarchy of Spain, which in turn was itself the dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, and of their respective colonial empires, that existed between 1580 and 1640 and brought the entire Iberian Peninsula except Andorra, as well as Portuguese and Spanish overseas possessions, under the Spanish Habsburg monarchs Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV. The union began after the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580 and the ensuing War of the Portuguese Succession, and lasted until the Portuguese Restoration War, during which the House of Braganza was established as Portugal's new ruling dynasty with the acclamation of John IV as the new king of Portugal.”
Note the "Download country names" button, and the "Display results in" language toggles.
In some cases name changes are political so I could see there being resistance to going along, if the politics doesn't align.
From the Wikipedia article: "Some locals referred to its construction as 'the devil's work'. A local minister warned that "occult groups" would visit the site and that a sacrifice was imminent." Even worse: "Kandiss Taylor, a candidate in the 2022 Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary, called the Guidestones "Satanic" in a campaign ad"
With local culture this backwards, you can't expect something like this to last for long.
As an ESL speaker, my first impression was "a tablet computer displaying unknown language found in Georgia, US". Feels like some extraterrestrial technology.
(despite loving Language Log)
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Of course if I had paid attention I probably would have just learned "USSR" at the time. But maybe that makes it even less forgivable since it was current events.