Lost languages rediscovered at ancient library

[Brian G Turner]

A project to look more closely at ancient texts has apparently discovered unknown Greek poetry - and writing in a couple of barely known languages:

Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World's Oldest Continuously Run Libraries | Smart News | Smithsonian

 

[hej]

Neat.

I checked out the article, and I found most interesting the preciousness of paper/parchment/whatever they were re-using (hence the palimpsests). That value continued past the day of Bach. After he died, his music was often seen as waaay over the hill, and his sheet music tarred and pasted on apple trees to protect them from the frost. At least that's what a music professor claimed.

By the way, a much older lost language, that linguists have reconstructed and I have found very helpful for my stories, is Proto-Indo-European. According to the Kurgan Hypothesis, upon which I base the setting in my manuscript and another WIP (not quite ready), it is the language that peoples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe brought with them as they spread into Europe -- thousands of years ago.

As many may know, PIE is important b/c is it the mother tongue of European languages (excepting Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian).

I find the resurrection of dead languages (excepting Latin owing to its continued, albeit fragmentary, use) to be strangely compelling.

 

[Harpo]

 

[BAYLOR]

View attachment 87034

It looks looks like Cuneiform.

 

[Alex The G and T]

It looks like wheatabix

 

[BAYLOR]

It looks like wheatabix

Unfrosted.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Humans have been around for almost a quarter of a million years, and the oldest known civilisation we know of around 3-5,000 years - a fraction of that time. In those previous 200,000 years, how many civilisations rose and fell, now hidden beneath the waves, the sands or the ice. And how many of them will we rediscover? Perhaps one day we will find texts telling the history and language of older civilisations on Earth.

 

[KiraAnn]

Humans have been around for almost a quarter of a million years, and the oldest known civilisation we know of around 3-5,000 years - a fraction of that time. In those previous 200,000 years, how many civilisations rose and fell, now hidden beneath the waves, the sands or the ice. And how many of them will we rediscover? Perhaps one day we will find texts telling the history and language of older civilisations on Earth.

You mean like the Hyborean Age?

 

[CupofJoe]

Many years ago, when I was active as an amateur archaeologist and late night around a campfire there was a discussion about pre-history. Specifically, that hundred thousand plus years where not much seems to have happened. I can remember one person saying that there was little evidence of the equivalent of the Stone Age in Asia and they named China as an example. Things like arrow tips, knives and skinning tools are almost non-existent. But as the old adage goes “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” as someone pointed out that the area did have an almost endless supply of Bamboo. With that you can make a lot of things that will rot away in a year or two.
The point I took away from that is just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there.
But also it doesn't mean that it was...

 

[paranoid marvin]

Many years ago, when I was active as an amateur archaeologist and late night around a campfire there was a discussion about pre-history. Specifically, that hundred thousand plus years where not much seems to have happened. I can remember one person saying that there was little evidence of the equivalent of the Stone Age in Asia and they named China as an example. Things like arrow tips, knives and skinning tools are almost non-existent. But as the old adage goes “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” as someone pointed out that the area did have an almost endless supply of Bamboo. With that you can make a lot of things that will rot away in a year or two.
The point I took away from that is just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there.
But also it doesn't mean that it was...

A quick Google states that most traces of our current civilisation would disappear after 1000 years. Imagine what would be left after 100,000 years. And Homo sapiens have been around for two to three times as long.

 

[hitmouse]

A quick Google states that most traces of our current civilisation would disappear after 1000 years.

that seems quite unlikely considering the sheer quantity of stuff much older than 1000 years still lying around. Some things are very durable, as are the massive earthworks of the last few hundred years.

 

[Parson]

One word; Plastic.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Yes, I agree that its likely there will be remnants left for quite some time. But then again later civilisations may use what we left behind, so no-one would know that it was us that left it.

I do find it hard to believe that (relatively) 'nothing' in the first couple of hundred thousand years that humans were around. And in the time before that, who knows?

 

[BAYLOR]

Humans have been around for almost a quarter of a million years, and the oldest known civilisation we know of around 3-5,000 years - a fraction of that time. In those previous 200,000 years, how many civilisations rose and fell, now hidden beneath the waves, the sands or the ice. And how many of them will we rediscover? Perhaps one day we will find texts telling the history and language of older civilisations on Earth.

This is why Il ike fiction al places like Robert E. Howard's the Thurian and Hyborian The whole notion that maybe in the space of 200,000 there could have civilizations along those lines appeals to me .