National Geographic: “Ancient Script Spurs Rethinking of Historic ‘Backwater’”

At a temple site in the Republic of Georgia, letters carved in stone could change the way we see the development of writing, explains the National Geographic.

When third-year archaeology student Sophia Paatashvili noticed a series of marks carved into a stone slab that she was excavating an ancient temple at an Iron Age site called Grakliani last month, little did she know she could have discovered the oldest example of a native alphabet in the Caucasus.

The National Geographic has written about Paatashvili’s discovery and how it could change history.

This discovery is not just important for the history of Georgia, but in the history of the development of writing,” says Vakhtang Licheli, who leads the Ivane Javakashvili Tbilisi State University archaeological institute.

The excavated portion of the inscription—some 31 by three inches—features at least five curved shapes hollowed out in deep chasms in the stone. The script as a whole bears no relation to any other alphabet, although Licheli detects similarities to letters in ancient Greek and Aramaic.

"These few letters in stone upend traditional historical narratives about the native population of the region the Greeks and Romans called Iberia (not to be confused with the modern-day Iberian Peninsula), which bordered the Georgian coast of the Black Sea,” reads the article.

"Archaeologists have long known that literate civilizations were present there as long ago as the fourth millennium BC—excavations throughout Georgia have unearthed coins, beads, and pottery from Assyria, Greece, and Persia.

Until now, though, no trace of Iberian literacy from as long ago as the Iron Age.”

The earliest known Georgian and Armenian scripts date from the fifth century A.D., shortly after these cultures converted to Christianity.

Read the full story here: www.nationalgeographic.com.