Archaeologists have discovered a rib bone from 600 A.D in Břeclav with the Germanic Futhark alphabet inscribed in it, changing the consensus on anthropological history.
The rib bone was discovered in 2017, but years of extensive analysis have finally revealed the origin and the age of the special artifact.
Until now, it was thought that the oldest language that Slavic people ever came into contact with was the Glagolitic script. But these runes show that people on Czech land were in contact with the Futhark language beforehand.
“This bone, which we found during our research in 2017, was examined in detail by an international team of scientists from the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, and Australia. It was found to be the oldest inscription ever found in Slavic lands, which is an unprecedented accomplishment not just for the Czech Republic but for Europe,” said Jiří Macháček, head of the Department of Archeology and Museology at Masaryk University.
Robert Nedoma, an expert on Old Germanic languages from the University of Vienna, was able to confirm that the inscriptions on the bone were indeed futhark, which was spoken by a Germanic tribe that existed in Central Europe between the 2nd and 7th century A.D.
The inscription was not a message or a story, but actually, the last seven letters of the Futhark alphabet, implying that the artifact was used as some sort of educational tool. There are only 17 archaeological examples of futhark in all of Europe.
Featured image by Masaryk University | Source: CTK
