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It really can't be overstated; prior to this the amount of writing was basically zilch, and it was almost all grave markers. There wasn't really an expectation
by Aelinsaar 11y ago
It really can't be overstated; prior to this the amount of writing was basically zilch, and it was almost all grave markers. There wasn't really an expectation that would ever change, so this is a hugely pleasant surprise.
- nsajko 11y agoThis contains just 70 legible letters and punctuation marks, less than your comment; so there's not really that much potential for understanding new words. The largest Etruscan body of text we have is 1200 words, it somehow ended up as wrappings for a mummy in Egypt.
- lgas 11y agoI guess it can be overstated.
- Aelinsaar 11y agoI guess so!
- raldi 11y agoHalf a tweet.
- FroshKiller 11y agoIt could be an extraordinarily expressive language, though. Think about what Japanese writers can do with 140 characters.
- coderdude 11y agoThis made me want to Google 'Japanese entropy bits' and the first hit for me was this paper: http://www.phontron.com/paper/neubig13sam.pdf http://www.phontron.com/paper/neubig13sam.pdf "How Much is Said in a Tweet? A Multilingual, Information-theoretic Perspective" I think what you want is presented in a figure on page 6.
- FroshKiller 11y agoSo while Japanese tweeters could express more than English tweeters in the same character count, they generally don't choose to. That's pretty interesting.
- jpatokal 11y agoEtruscan was written in a predecessor of the Latin alphabet we still use (albeit omitting most vowels), so no, it's not going to have a huge amount of information.
- hcs 11y ago> The largest Etruscan body of text we have is 1200 words, it somehow ended up as wrappings for a mummy in Egypt. Very cool, I'd never heard of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Linteus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Linteus
- fsiefken 11y agoYes, I didn't get why Annalee Newitz (Ars Technica) wrote: "the stele contains 70 legible letters and punctuation marks" and on the other hand writes: "Scientists believe it will be full of words and concepts they've never encountered before" It makes it out to be some kind of revolutionary Rosetta's Stone, but with 70 characters this is even less then the Faistos Disk of that other enigmatic civilization, the Minoans. I think 'full of words' is a bit overstated - in the Italian reporting it's said that because of the different genre compared to the regular finds we have the scholars will probably encounter some new words (which would be around < 10) probably including the deity of the temple.
- nxzero 11y agoWhen you say zilch, are you saying no know examples in carved stone, you believe no written language was done before these examples, or something else? Further, what evidence leads you to believe these? For example, some cave paintings cave estimated to at least 37,300 years old and some prehistoric figurines may be as old as 800,000 years.
- ChrisGranger 11y agoI believe he's referring specifically to writing in the Etruscan language.
- nxzero 11y agoI see, interesting that there's so much interest in Etruscan writing & history.
- camhenlin 11y agoNot really, it's a precursor to many European cultures
- mc32 11y agoProbably because their territories were conquered by the early Romans and little remained of their history after the Romans overtook those areas... And Romans are seen, along with the non-conquering Greeks, as _the_ pillars of Western Civilization.
- duaneb 11y agoIt is more accurate to say that Roman culture is a blend of Latin, Etruscan, and (later) Hellenistic culture. The Romans may have finished them off, but not before appropriating massive amounts of culture: the household shrine, burial rites, and the fasces to name a few examples.
- duaneb 11y agoIt's the mysterious side of Roman culture. Also, the language itself is an isolate and of linguistic interest as language isolates are unusual in Europe.