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The Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland is home to approximately 160,000 volumes of literary and historical manuscripts dating back to the eighth century—all of which are written by hand, on parchment, in languages rarely spoken in modern times.To preserve these historical accounts of humanity, such texts, numbering in the millions, have been kept safely stored away in libraries and monasteries all over the world. A significant portion of these collections are available to the general public through digital imagery, but experts say there is an extraordinary amount of material that has never been read—a treasure trove of insight...

One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala in Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an internet forum. The message was in stark white type, against a black background.

A four-sided red jasper sealstone is among the finds unearthed during this season's excavation of the Minoan peak sanctuary at Vrysinas, located south of the city of Rethymnon. The whole area was officially announced and included in the archaeological sites list by the Central Archaeological Council of Greece. The sealstone, which is carved on all four surfaces with characters of the Minoan Hieroglyphic script, constitutes the sole evidence to date for the presence of this earliest Minoan style of writing in Western Crete. The excavation, which began in 2004, is conducted by the Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities under...

Archaeologists say two participants in a petroglyph seminar at the US Virgin Islands National Park have come across the first newly discovered rock carving there since the 1970s. The carving looks like a spearhead or an elongated leaf. Park archaeologist Ken Wild says the design is different from others on St John island. "It's the type that's seen in Venezuela or St. Lucia" across the Caribbean."

Published online: 28 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060227-3 Were ancient Minoans centuries ahead of their time? Unprecedented mathematical knowledge found in Bronze Age wall paintings. Philip Ball Did the Minoans understand the Archimedes' spiral more than 1,000 years before him? A geometrical figure commonly attributed to Archimedes in 300 BC has been identified in Minoan wall paintings dated to over 1,000 years earlier. The mathematical features of the paintings suggest that the Minoans of the Late Bronze Age, around 1650 BC, had a much more advanced working knowledge of geometry than has previously been recognized, says computer scientist Constantin Papaodysseus of...

WRITING is one of the greatest inventions in human history. Perhaps the greatest, since it made history possible. Without writing, there could be no accumulation of knowledge, no historical record, no science - and of course no books, newspapers or internet.The first true writing we know of is Sumerian cuneiform - consisting mainly of wedge-shaped impressions on clay tablets - which was used more than 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards writing appeared in Egypt, and much later in Europe, China and Central America. Civilisations have invented hundreds of different writing systems. Some, such as the one you are...

Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in faked ancient art, is claiming that the disc and its indecipherable text is not a relic dating from 1,700BC, but a forgery that has duped scholars since Luigi Pernier, an Italian archaeologist, "discovered" it in 1908 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete. Pernier was desperate to impress his colleagues with a find of his own, according to Dr Eisenberg, and needed to unearth something that could outdo the discoveries made by Sir Arthur Evans, the renowned English archaeologist, and Federico Halbherr, a fellow Italian... Dr Eisenberg, who has conducted appraisals for the US...

My favorite undeciphered script is the one found on the Phaistos disk, the flat circle of clay about six inches across found in the Heraklion Museum on Crete. The disk itself was discovered in 1908 and it has been deciphered every few years ever since. Unfortunately, no two people agree on what it says, as I mentioned before. Since so many other people are interested in this topic, I thought I'd include a few of the decipherments, just to show how different they can be. The first one comes from German... In this version, it's a very involved calendar and...

Since this disk was found in Crete, and the people of Crete today speak Greek, that's a good language to assume was spoken by the maker of the disk. Still, that's a guess, or a hypothesis, not a fact. Besides that, we know that not everybody on Crete spoke Greek in the Bronze Age. The classical Greeks mentioned people they called Eteocretans who did not speak Greek. Further, we know that Linear A, written by the Minoans on Crete before the Mycenean Greeks came, did not represent Greek. Professor Hubert LaMarle considers it to be an early Indo-Iranian language, related...

John Gilpin, a woodlands officer in the Parks and Countryside department, stumbled upon the find in Ecclesall Woods. He discovered a boulder with a series of markings, lines and cuts - which, after being examined by experts, has been declared a significant archaeological find... Despite having been examined by experts, the meaning of the carvings is unclear... The previous discovery of prehistoric rock art in Ecclesall Woods was in 1983. The only other example nearby is at Gardom's Edge, north of Baslow in the Peak District... The find is one of a number of new archaeological discoveries made around South...

Tablets uncovered at Persepolis in Iran are covered with writing in Aramaic. The archive, being studied at the University of Chicago, provides new insights on the language, which has been written and spoken in the Middle East continuously since ancient times. (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars at the University of Chicago analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages. Members of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California are helping the University’s Oriental Institute make very high-quality electronic...

The Syrian National Expedition working at al-Mishrefa (Qatana) site in Homs governorate discovered Wednesday a cuneiform tablet dating back to1700 B.C. of the Bronze era. The tablet tells the story of Mrs. Khimar Ashkhara who buys a wall to separate between her house and the house of her neighbors Mr. Akhla Ashmieh and to fix the real-estate of her property in return for 25 grams of silver

Found stored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist. Like many ancient Egyptian documents, the Turin Kinglist is written on the stem of a papyrus plant. Believed to date from the long reign of Ramesses II, the papyrus contains an ancient list of Egyptian kings. Scholars from the British Museum were tipped off to the existence of the additional fragments after reviewing a 1959 analysis of the papyrus by a British archaeologist. In his work, the archaeologist, Alan Gardiner, mentions...

For traditional Basques the pictures, symbols and words found scraped onto pieces of third century pottery dug up near the town of Nanclares, in northern Spain, included miraculous evidence that their unique language of Euskara was far older than ever thought. Eighteen months ago the dig's director, Eliseo Gil, claimed that some finds at the Roman town known as Veleia were on par with those at Pompeii or Rome itself. Basque nationalists bristled with pride... Now a committee of experts has revealed those jewels to be fakes... The hunt is on for an archeological fraudster who defaced fragments of third...

A ROMAN coin unearthed by a Wrexham metal detecting enthusiast has been confirmed as one of the oldest ever found in Wales. Retired butcher Roy Page, 69, of Coedpoeth, found the detailed 2,000-year-old coin on a farm near St Asaph when he went on a search there with the Mold-based Historical Search Society earlier this year. Roy gave the tiny silver coin, which depicts two horses being driven by a man on a chariot, to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), who have recently confirmed the specific date that it was made. It is believed to have been brought over some...

Today, excavators at the Oymaagac mound in the Black Sea city of Samsun's Vezirkopru district are reveling in their potential find, believing the evidence is mounting and Oymaagac will be unveiled as the holder of Nerik. The geographical location of Oymaagac, the impressive representative building on top of the acropolis, and especially the tiny cuneiform writing style on the tablet fragments all suggested the excavators might find Nerik here... the tiny cuneiform writing resembled that on clay tablets from the Bogazkoy/Hattusha archives dealing with Nerik... the writings, along with several ritual texts from the Hittite period, suggested Oymaagac had to...

Science magazine this week details the discovery of a stone block in Veracruz, Mexico, that contains a previously unknown system of writing; believed by archeologists to be the earliest in the Americas. The slab - named the Cascajal block - dates to the early first millennium BCE and has features that indicate it comes from the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica. One of the archaeologists behind the discovery, Brown University's Stephen D. Houston, said that the block and its ancient script "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to this civilization." "It's...

Rare cave inscriptions By Gamini Mahadura A cave with rare ancient inscriptions dating back to more than 10000 years has reportedly been discovered at Badungala in the PS division of Yakkalamulla in Galle. Archaeology officials say that the inscriptions date back to the Endera yugaya or the era when animals were domesticated. They say similar cave inscriptions had been so far discovered in Alauwa, Ambilikanda and Mawanella. This is the first time that such a find has been reported from the South.

The rise of India's economy has brought an eagerness to learn the ancient 'language of the gods' – and a great-great aunt to English. ___ Deep inside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a Wednesday evening recently, a class of about a dozen students were speaking an arcane ancient tongue. "It is time for exams, and I play every day," says one. "Perhaps, you should study, too," counters another at the conversation table. The others laugh. No, this isn't Latin 101 – that would be easy. This is Sanskrit, a classical language that is the Indian equivalent of ancient Greek...

The number of Yemeni islands in these regions amounts to 182 islands, the most important of which is the Island of Socotra. Other Yemeni islands are scattered in three main sectors, namely, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea... Yemeni archeologist Ahmed Billah, who is researcher working in Socotra, is concerned that the ancient features must be protected from the adventures of man. "I recommended in my last report on the island practical solutions to overcome the dangers threatening the ancient landmarks in Socotra. People are using flagstones and ancient rocks in building the houses. Add...