Researchers from northern Spain have found an artifact containing the oldest written record in a language that was
Experts from the scientific society of Aranzadi and Basqueresearch institute deciphered and dated the inscription on a flat piece of bronze in the shape of a human hand. Archaeologists excavated the artifact itself last year. Researchers believe this is the earliest known evidence of written Vascon language, the predecessor of Basque. It is still spoken in some regions of northern Spain and southwestern France.
New discovery challenges widelyIt is widely believed among linguists that the Vascones, an Iron Age tribe that lived in the modern-day Spanish region of Navarre, only mastered writing after Roman invaders introduced the Latin alphabet.
Artifact. Photo: Aranzadi Scientific Society
“This work completely changes our understandingabout the Vascones and their writing,” said Joaquín Gorrochategui, professor of Indo-European linguistics at the University of the Basque Country. “We were sure that in ancient times the Vascons could neither read nor write and used writing only for minting coins.”
Archaeologists believe that the hand that was named“by the hand of Irulegi”, in honor of the place where it was found at the foot of the medieval castle, was intended to protect the house. Such an amulet hung on the door. So far, linguists have only been able to translate one of the words written on the hand: “sorioneku,” which corresponds to the Basque word “zorioneku,” or “happy.”
The Basque language, even several centuries later,despite having given way to Spanish and French. Scientists estimate that it is spoken by several hundred thousand people, mainly in the Spanish Basque Country and Navarre regions, as well as in the Pyrenees in a small area of France.
Linguists consider it an “isolated language,” meaning that it has no known roots in other language groups.
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