Mysterious tablet with unknown language unearthed in Georgia
108 comments
·December 13, 2024orbital-decay
kseistrup
The link you gave us to the actual paper doesn't work, but the PDF can be downloaded from https://jaha.org.ro/index.php/JAHA/article/download/1035/616
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.”
_0ffh
Link doesn't work for for me (not found error), but this one does (including pdf d/l): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385937685_Journal_o...
GaggiX
Something very cool about the Georgian language is that its family, the Kartvelian family, has no known relation to any other language family. It's one of the world's primary language families. Its origin, including the alphabet, is very mysterious.
bergie
The alphabet is so cool, strong resemblance to Tolkien's elvish. Especially when you find a ruined castle or monastery in the mountains with that script on the gate.
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.
alephnerd
If you think that's cool, then reading about Paleo-Siberian languages would be down your alley.
Lots of language isolates and interesting paleohistory. Yenesian will never stop wrinkling my brain.
ane
Your sentence makes it sound like Yeniseian languages are language isolates, but what is absolutely astounding is that Yeniseian languages seem to form a family with the Na-Dene languages of North America. Two language families separated by the Bering strait over 15000 years ago!
alephnerd
Yep! And it's absolutely amazing! The distant brethren of Navajo basically destroyed the Han Empire 2000 years ago.
Loughla
That actually is really cool. That implies a certain degree of isolation for A very long time. Do genetics in that area have any interesting patterns?
skowalak
It can imply isolation, but not necessarily. It is also possible that there are some precursor languages, of which no evidence could be found (yet). Another good example are the Koreanic languages of which modern Korean is a member.
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).
Loughla
That's fair, but also just as interesting. What are the chances that language is older than we thought? And if decent chances, how much older? Were early hominids capable of speaking?
Wild to think about.
korginator
There could also be a distant relationship with the Brahmi script / family [1]
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.
retrac
There almost certainly is a distant relationship. Almost all writing systems in Eurasia are derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphics through the Phoenician script, which gave us the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, Arabic, and the Brahmi script, among others. The only system in use today in the whole world which isn't derived from Phonecian is Chinese and even there its derivatives like Japanese kana and Korean hangul were influenced by knowledge of alphabetic writing via India.
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).
shakna
> An initial comparative analysis conducted with over 20 languages shows that the characters, which could belong to an aboriginal Caucasian population, beside proto-Georgian and Albanian writing signs, bear some similarities with Semitic, Brahmani, and North Iberian characters.
aprilthird2021
Odd to see so many are confused about the country of Georgia. I thought it is known for having a unique language, and thus the first place of the two Georgias where one would expect a mysterious tablet with an unknown language to be found.
ikekkdcjkfke
wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
0points
Those are made up by a con man that went by the name Joseph Smith, but not even he claimed they were found in Georgia...
catlover76
[dead]
ben9425
Ever concider it might be runic. Many of those symbols look runic. I would translate the first two symbols to say fortunate lake the last looks like the runic symbol for protection. Thanks ben stiles
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WalterBright
Hmm, looks like my password!
edit: dang, looks like I'll have to change my password again
bergie
Hasn't IT told you that you shouldn't write your password on basalt tablets? Time for another IT Security compliance e-training...
tecun9425
Ever concider it might be runic. Many of those symbols look runic. I would translate the first two symbols to say fortunate lake the last looks like the runic symbol for protection. Thanks ben stiles
begueradj
It's strange how the alphabet looks like Tifinagh (Berber alphabet).
tomcam
> Archaeologists have speculated that the writing may have recorded military spoils, construction projects, or offerings to deities, though definitive interpretations remain elusive.
So they know jack shit. Just as likely to be for accounting purposes, like a large number of Sumerian tablets.
rrr_oh_man
First rule of archeology: if you don’t know what it’s for, it’s probably religious reasons.
pfdietz
It's a ritual object! Like those porcelain objects left by the Nacirema.
https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir...
gopher_space
A seminal work that influenced David Macaulay's lesser-known efforts.
shermantanktop
That was an enlightening read. Such odd customs…
watwut
Seems like in here, two of the three listed possibilities are practical.
0x1ceb00da
Return the slab, or suffer my curse.
latentcall
The man in gauze, the man in gauze.
Loughla
So very many nightmares from that as a child.
Who thought that was a good idea for kids? I mean, it was an awesome show, but still.
null
Polizeiposaune
The tablet was unearthed in Georgia (country), not Georgia (U.S. state).
ianburrell
It would be nice if the Georgians requested changing country name to Sakartvelo, the local name. It would be longer but less confusing.
jltsiren
It would be amusing if they changed the name to Iberia. Which was, after all, the traditional name of the country in Europe.
anthk
The Spaniards and the Portuguese people will be equally pissed, then.
drdec
Requested of who? I don't think we need to wait around for people to ask us to start calling their country what they call it.
Polizeiposaune
Perhaps these folks at the UN: https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/en/ who maintain a list of names for countries, with both long form and short form in 6 different languages.
boomboomsubban
We don't need to wait around, but people are going to treat you differently if you start casually saying "my friend visited Deutschland on holiday." Even Germans will probably think you're doing some sort of bit.
croisillon
or changing US Georgia to Muscogee?
Polizeiposaune
Or perhaps something like Kartvelia in English since, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country)#Names_of_Geo...: "The Georgian circumfix sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating 'the area where X dwell', where X is an ethnonym."
madcaptenor
The family of languages that includes Georgian is the Kartvelian family. So there’s already some precedent for Kartvelia (noun)/Kartvelian (adjective) in English.
Iwan-Zotow
Kartveli, country to be called Kartveli. Sa is a language prefix
walrus01
It's less confusing if you understand its name in Farsi, which is Gorgistan. The regional neighbors of it all have unique names for it that don't overlap with the US state.
binary132
Georgia (King George) not Georgia (st. George)
deadbabe
Would have been far more interesting and mysterious if it was Georgia (U.S. state).
mometsi
Would have been far more interesting and mysterious if it was Georgia (outer Main Belt asteroid).
all2
What if it was all three at nearly the same time?
Iwan-Zotow
you forgot South Georgia
dboreham
Devil left it there when he last went down.
spacecadet
I heard he was lookin' for a soul to steal...
GauntletWizard
Not really, Georgia (U.S. State) has a history of modern-manufactured stone tablets:
shiroiushi
What a colossal waste of money and effort. The person or people who wasted their money on this project should have known better than to erect such a thing in the deep South.
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.
cozzyd
Or South Georgia
cvhc
And a stone tablet, not a tablet computer.
As an ESL speaker, my first impression was "a tablet computer displaying unknown language found in Georgia, US". Feels like some extraterrestrial technology.
onlypassingthru
If it's old, it would have to be. NA natives had no written languages.
khaki54
Decent gag that baits my click every time
null
Actual paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.14795/j.v11i3.1035
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.