There are still some mysteries, and the language of the Picts of Scotland, who thrived from the 4th to the 9th Centuries, is one of them ....
And now a row has broken out after a research team, led by Professor Rob Lee from Exeter University in the UK, examined symbols on more than 200 carved stones, and concluded that the Pictish carvings were "
symbolic markings that communicated information" - that these were
words rather than pictures.
But French linguist Arnaud Fournet opened up the mystery once again by suggesting that this was not true and that the methods used to reach this conclusion were flawed.
Mr Fournet said that, by examining Pictish carvings as if they were "linear symbols", and by applying the rules of written language to them, the scientists could have produced biased results.
"
It looks like their method is transforming two-dimensional glyphs into a one-dimensional string of symbols. The carvings must have some kind of purpose - some kind of meanings, but... it's very difficult to determine if their conclusion is contained in the raw data or if it's an artefact of their method."
Mr Fournet also suggested that the researchers' methods should be tested and verified for other ancient symbols.
Personally I find it hard to believe that they were using pictographs when surrounded by writing from the surrounding kingdoms, even if it was just a few monks and clerics at local royal courts.
No one lives in isolation from the trends and ideas of their neighbours, and the Picts came from tribes that must have been exposed to Latin for centuries.
To me these are stories in pictures, but not words ..... they tell of events, but possibly just as prompts for well known stories ..... if you look in medieval churches, they often had pictures and stories from the Bible painted on the walls as prompts for the illiterate peasants, but the words were still wriiten in Latin in the Bibles.
