A monastery, where the earliest surviving Scots Gaelic text was once noted within the margins of a significant Scottish manuscript called the Book of Deer , disappeared from the pages of history...
Research conducted in late 2013 offered intriguing clues to decoding the secrets of the Mesopotamian clay balls, which date back 5,500 years. The study, which used CT scanning to look inside the clay...
The Chinese writing system is by far one of the most complex in the world, and its origins are truly ancient. In fact, Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the...
Runic script is an alphabetic system based on a non-alphabetical order row. This means that it has letters, like in many languages, but the letters are not arranged in a standard alphabetical order...
Researchers performing excavations at a medieval fortress in Bulgaria unearthed a weathered and aged lead plate that contained a hard-to-read inscription. In fact, the inscribed words were so faint...
One of the most captivating tales in Egyptian history is The Story of Sinuhe, one of the most well-preserved works recovered from the Middle Kingdom Period (2055-1650 BC). Set during the reign of...
‘The dream stone of all runologists’ that can potentially provide clues to the origins of Western writing has been discovered in Norway. A runestone with inscriptions dating back to the earliest...
A group of 21,500-year-old painted “dots and lines” are at the center of an academic debate as to whether they are a form of proto writing. While multiple researchers claim they represent “an ancient...
Titus Livius, or just Livy for short, was one of the most famous historians in all of history. One of the three great Roman historians, his masterpiece, Ab Urbe Condita, made him a legend in his own...
Norse civilization has provided an enormous amount of culture to the world, from its rich history to its vast mythology. One captivating aspect of Norse culture is often overlooked: runes. Most...
Often referred to as the author of the Mediterranean Kama Sutra , little is known about Philaenis of Samos, who likely wrote this work around the 4th century BC. She is the most mentioned author of...
A linguistic expert has decoded curious symbols on a 2,100-years-old bronze hand that was discovered last year at an Iron Age castle in Spain. The symbols represent the “earliest” text ever...
One would expect the oldest written words found during archaeological excavations to be carved into the face of a stone tablet, or perhaps into the surface of an ancient stone monument. But they can...
Conventional archaeology claims that writing was not invented until some time between 3000 and 4000 BC in Sumeria . However, the discovery of a far older artifact in northern Greece appears to...
As crazy as it sounds, it’s now well attested that the letter “A” started out its evolution as the Egyptian hieroglyph for an ox. But its truly mind-blowing transformation came when turquoise miners...
In 1798, the French under Napoleon Bonaparte launched a military campaign in Egypt. Along with soldiers and military personnel, Napoleon brought a large number of scholars and scientists known as...
An isolated African script is revealing secrets about the unknown evolutionary origins of handwriting and the development of writing. The Vai script was created just two centuries ago to solve the...
In December 2021, the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) announced that rare runic writing has been discovered in Oslo carved into the faces of a stick and a large animal bone...
Easter Island is best known for its gigantic stone monumental statues . But it has produced a number of other intriguing artifacts, including wooden rongorongo tablets and other items inscribed with...
The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving law code. This text was written on clay tablets in the Sumerian language and is reckoned to have been produced towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC...
Today the steles of Tonyukuk the Wise are situated at an immensely popular and historical 1300-year-old memorial site. It is located northwest of Bayantsogt Mountain in Erdene Soum, Mongolia...
A team of Austrian and Israeli archaeologists working the fertile ground of the famed Tel Lachish site in central Israel made a discovery that has altered existing theories about how the first...
Saxo Grammaticus was a Danish historian whose writings were instrumental for the preservation of the ancient history of the Danes and their nations. Considered to be one of the major historical...
For the first time ever, researchers have virtually unfolded a sealed letter from Renaissance Europe. It has remained unopened for 300 years, and thanks to their innovative computational approach,...