Lost Language of the Picts is Discovered

New research has determined that the ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind carved stones displaying the written language of the Picts, a society existing in Scotland from 300 to 843.

Highly stylized rock engravings on what are known as the Pictish Stones earlier were believed to be rock art. But a new study instead concludes the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts.

"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News. "We know that the three other languages were ~ and are ~ complex spoken languages, so there is every indication that Pictish was also a complex spoken language."

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Scottish Settlement Dates Back 14,000 Years

Amateur archaeologists have uncovered Scotland's oldest human settlement, dating back 14,000 years. It’s the first proof that humans lived in Scotland during the upper paleolithic period, when nomadic humans hunted with bows and arrows and when mammoth and rhinoceros roamed the land.

Flint arrowheads were discovered in a field by the Biggar Archeology Group. The tools had been made in a way that identified them as belonging to about 12,000 BC. At that time, the North Sea was an expanse of land, over which nomadic humans roamed. Similar tools had been found in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, but never in Scotland.

Dr Alan Saville, a senior curator at the National Museum of Scotland, who helped identify the objects, said he was "very excited" when he saw them. "This is the breakthrough," he said. "Now we are able to say for absolute certain that we had human settlement at that time in Scotland."

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Mystery Surrounds 1,000-Year Lapse in Rites

Some of the standing stones marking Kilmartin Glen's ancient ceremonial site.

Archaeologists are having trouble accounting for a mysterious millennium-long absence of activity at an ancient Scots religious site.

Kilmartin Glen is one of the most important Neolithic sites in Europe, predating both the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Hunter-gatherer tribes practiced sacred rites there from 3700 BC or even earlier, to about 1100 BC. It contains at least 350 ancient monuments, including burial cairns, rock carvings and standing stones in addition to the spectacular remains of the fortress at Dunadd, capital of the kingdom of Dalriada.

But archaeologists have identified a period of almost 1,000 years in which no monuments were erected and the population virtually disappeared. There is some speculation that a dramatic climate change may have affected the area’s inhabitants.

“Kilmartin Glen is one of the richest archaeological areas in Scotland, with a very high concentration of ritual sites.” Alison Sheridan, head of early prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, told the Times of London this week. “It was a place for ceremony, for burying people, and observing the movements of the Sun and the Moon.”

“We are not too certain what happened between 1100 BC and 200 BC,” Sheridan told the Times. “A hoard of swords has been found and a few artifacts buried as gifts to the gods in the late Bronze Age between 1000 and 750 BC. But there are few structures and no settlements. When you start getting settlements again around 200BC they are in little fortified settlements.

“It was no longer a happy valley, and people raided each other,” she said.

Click here for the London Times Online article.

Photo above shows Neolithic carvings at Kilmartin Glen.