New Indo-European language discovered during excavation in Turkey

Phys dot org ^ | September 21, 2023 | Provided by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

[SunkenCiv]

...Excavations in Boğazköy-Hattusha have been going on for more than 100 years under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute. The site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986; almost 30,000 clay tablets with cuneiform writing have been found there so far. These tablets, which were included in the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage in 2001, provide rich information about the history, society, economy and religious traditions of the Hittites and their neighbors.

Yearly archaeological campaigns... continue to add to the cuneiform finds. Most of the texts are written in Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language and the dominant language at the site. Yet the excavations of this year yielded a surprise: Hidden in a cultic ritual text written in Hittite is a recitation in a hitherto unknown language...

The discovery of another language in the Boğazköy-Hattusha archives is not entirely unexpected, as Prof. Schwemer explains: "The Hittites were uniquely interested in recording rituals in foreign languages." ...

Thus cuneiform texts from Boğazköy-Hattusha include passages in Luwian and Palaic, two other Anatolian-Indo-European languages closely related to Hittite, as well as Hattic, a non-Indo-European language. Now the language of Kalasma can be added to these.

Being written in a newly discovered language the Kalasmaic text is as yet largely incomprehensible... Professor Elisabeth Rieken (Marburg University), a specialist in ancient Anatolian languages, has confirmed that the idiom belongs to the family of Anatolian-Indo-European languages.

According to Rieken, despite its geographic proximity to the area where Palaic was spoken, the text seems to share more features with Luwian. How closely the language of Kalasma is related to the other Luwian dialects of Late Bronze Age Anatolia will be the subject of further investigation.

[SunkenCiv]

At this excavation site at the foot of Ambarlikaya in Boğazköy-Hattusha in Turkey, a cuneiform tablet with a previously unknown Indo-European language was discovered.

Credit: Andreas Schachner / Deutsches Archäologisches Institut

[SunkenCiv]

One of *those* topics.

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[SunkenCiv]

[Red Badger]

Wouldn’t that be an OLD Indo-European language?...............

[Paladin2]

Interesting what one can find outback in the lower 40 acres.

[SunkenCiv]

The oldest known written Indo-European languages are found at this one site.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, my dad found a whole clay tablet archive when he was stationed in Turkey, shipped them home one at a time, and built my sandbox out of them. Digging in that piqued my interest in archaeology.

[Red Badger]

....almost 30,000 clay tablets with cuneiform writing have been found there so far.

Tax Records.....................

[Oberon]

Yearly archaeological campaigns... continue to add to the cuneiform finds. Most of the texts are written in Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language and the dominant language at the site. Yet the excavations of this year yielded a surprise: Hidden in a cultic ritual text written in Hittite is a recitation in a hitherto unknown language...

Wait... I think I saw this movie...

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Pretty much. Court records would be more accurate. We are a practical species.

Rulers need to know who has what, who agreed to what and who is getting what. Once the tribe grows to beyond about 200 people some sort of record keeping is required. The larger the group the more complex the record keeping.

[FarCenter]

Lawyers probably produce more text than any other occupation.

[MinorityRepublican]

We’re not supposed to spell it Turkey anymore.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Probably.

Although accountants give them a run for their money.

[pierrem15]

In the late Bronze Age collapse, Hattusa the capital was burned and the clay tablets in the archive were accidentally fired, making them durable.

The tablets also refer to a man the Hittites called Attarsiya who was a 15th–14th century BCE military leader of Ahhiya, which is taken by some to be the Hittite form of Atreus, king of the Achaeans.

[SunkenCiv]

I guess the Turks will have to stuff it. /rimshot

[SunkenCiv]

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