The enigmatic pattern of inscribed symbols curled symmetrically around the upper part of the rough-edged, yellowish stone tablet and coiled into the middle in a decorative style typical of an extinct Iberian language called Southwest Script.
"We didn’t break into applause, but almost," said Amilcar Guerra, a University of Lisbon lecturer overseeing the excavation. "It’s an extraordinary thing."
For more than two centuries, scientists have tried to decipher Southwest Script. It is believed to be the peninsula’s oldest written tongue and, along with Etruscan from modern-day Italy, one of Europe’s first. The stone tablet features 86 characters and provides the longest-running text of the Iron Age language ever found.
About 90 slate tablets bearing the ancient inscriptions have been recovered, most of them incomplete. Almost all were scattered across southern Portugal, though a handful turned up in the neighboring Spanish region of Andalucia.
Some of the letters look like squiggles. Others are like crossed sticks. One resembles the number four, and another recalls a bow tie. They were carefully scored into the slate. The text is always a running script, with unseparated words that usually read from right to left.
The first attempts to interpret this writing date from the 18th century. It aroused the curiosity of a bishop whose diocese encompassed this region where the earth keeps coughing up new fragments.
Almodovar, a rural town of some 3,500 people, sits at the heart of the Southwest Script region. It created a museum two years ago where 20 of the engraved tablets are on display.
Though the evidence is gradually building as new tablets are found, researchers are handicapped because they are peering deep into a period of history about which they know little, says professor Pierre Swiggers, a Southwest Script specialist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Scientists have few original documents and hardly any parallel texts from the same time and place in readable languages.
"We hardly know anything about [the people’s] daily habits or religious beliefs," he says.
Southwest Script is one of just a handful of ancient languages about which little is known, according to Swiggers. The obscurity has provided fertile ground for competing theories about who wrote these words.
It is generally agreed that the texts date from between 2,500 and 2,800 years ago. Most experts have concluded that they were written by a people called Tartessians, a tribe of Mediterranean traders who mined for metal in these parts — one of Europe’s largest copper mines is nearby — but disappeared after a few centuries. Some scientists have proposed that the writers were other pre-Roman tribes, such as the Conii or Cynetes, or maybe even Celts who roamed this far south.
Another translation difficulty is that the writing is not standardized. It seems certain that it was adapted from the Phoenician and Greek alphabets because it copied some of their written conventions. However, it also tweaked some of those rules and invented new ones.
There’s also the problem of figuring out what messages the slate tablets are intended to convey. Even when they can read portions of text, scientists don’t really understand what it is saying — like a child mouthing the words of a Shakespeare play.
Last year’s find has helped, but it wasn’t the breakthrough scientists had hoped for, Guerra says. If all the Southwest Script found so far was transcribed onto paper, it would still barely fill a single sheet.
Begin with a date and the city where the press release is issued, e.g. January 5, 2006--Fargo, N.D.
The first paragraph should sum up your announcement and mention every company or person involved.
Make the following paragraphs short and provide more detail. Include a quote or two from key people; each quote should start a new paragraph.
Your last paragraph is your "about" statement. It tells readers what your company is and what it does. If the press release includes a partnership with another company, include an "about" paragraph on it as well.
Conclude your press release with contact information.