Written Language of Ancient Scotland Discovered

[n2doc]

Once thought to be rock art, carved depictions of soldiers, horses and other figures are in fact part of a written language dating back to the Iron Age.

By Jennifer Viegas | Wed Mar 31, 2010 07:00 AM ET

The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.

The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.

"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News.

"We know that the three other languages were -- and are -- complex spoken languages, so there is every indication that Pictish was also a complex spoken language," added Lee, a professor in the School of Biosciences at the University of Exeter.

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-scotland-written-language.html

[FirstLight]

1. very cool

My ancestral clans were pretty smart after all ;)

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. To Some Academics The Picts allegedly had a Non Indo-European language

and was pre bronze age in origin but then others say it was Gaelic.

I think this finding might help resolve this issue

[kestrel91316]

4. Isn't Gaelic itself non-indo-european? It's weirdly unlike any other language

I know of (especially since the spoken form appears to bear no relationship to the written form, lol).

[eShirl]

5. ? It's in the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg

[Odin2005]

12. Naw, Pictish was probably a Brythonic Celtic language, related to Welsh

[eShirl]

3. What was the difference (in Bede's reference) between the British and English languages?

..."Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English"

[semillama]

6. My guess is this:

British = Welsh and Cornish, Scottish= Gaelic, Pictish= the mystery language, and English = the germanic language spoken by the Angles and Saxons.

[eShirl]

8. That makes too much sense

lol thanks :hi:

[yowzayowzayowza]

7. Mebbie now we'll know what they were grooving about. n/t

[Fumesucker]

9. Yoo Pict mah brainz!!

[nickinSTL]

10. very cool

:D

[ZeitgeistObserver]

11. SO! A pictish is worth a 1000 words?

[never cry wolf]

13. Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict n/t

[Igel]

14. There have been a number of attempts to apply

various kinds of non-linguistic analysis to linguisticky kinds of things.

Historical linguists have gotten lots of laughs out of some cladistic analyses.

This is likely to be one. I mean, nobody seriously clainmed that Pictish was a pidgin, meaning that the idea that a biosciences researcher even has to claim that it was a human language (as opposed to. . . ?) is borderline absurd. I have to assume that he was pushed into making the absurd statement; otherwise this is simply risible--that's the default hypothesis, the only one that seriously makes sense. Except, perhaps, to the reporter.

Even the guy that "agrees" is, in fact, tacitly disagreeing that there's any sort of linguistic--as opposed to semasiological--information in the "writing." Such engravings of course contain that kind of narrative information. It's the claim that you could, in principle, backtrack from the writing to some sort of phonological, perhaps lexical, and at the very least grammatical, information that's of interest.