http://www.omniglot.com

[lethargic_man]

Glyphs!

Inter alia:

• ת-א ligature in Syriac.

• These symbols have been found on many of the artefacts excavated from sites in south-east Europe [...]. The artefacts date from between the 7th and 4th millennia BC and those decorated with these symbols are between 8,000 and 6,500 years old.
  
  Some scholars believe that the Vinča symbols represent the earliest form of writing ever found, predating ancient Egyptian and Sumerian writing by thousands of years.

  What do you reckon?

(Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for pointing this site out to me.)

Comments

[justinep.livejournal.com]

You have a sister in law?!

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Since viiber '01, yes. My brother Paul married his long-time girlfriend Emma. (I'd suspected for years he would end up getting married before me. :-S)

[justinep.livejournal.com]

Gosh. I have met at least one brother of yours - I think I've met Paul. Gosh. Actually, I may have met both of them. I remember meeting someone (a younger brother of yours) at some sort of UJS thing, I think. When he told me where he was from I said 'ah, yes, you have the accent'. He burst out laughing and said the only people he knew in Newcastle who sounded like him were relatives. And so it transpired I knew you ;)

Anyway, a belated mazeltov!

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

He burst out laughing and said the only people he knew in Newcastle who sounded like him were relatives.

That's not entirely true. But when people complain I don't sound like a Geordie, I say the Queen's from London but doesn't sound like a Cockney.

Anyway, a belated mazeltov!

This is not something I consider myself mazeltovable about. Paul, yes, Emma, yes, my parents, yes; but not me.

These symbols have been found on many of the artefacts excavated from sites in south-east Europe

[ewx.livejournal.com]

...then why aren't there any pictures of any of them on the web?

Well, there might be, but looking for them didn't get me very far, ending up instead at loony Romanian sites about the Carpatho-Danubian conquest of Japan.

"The inscriptions are short" makes me suspect they weren't much more than the marks of owners or makers; I think "writing" demands slightly more than that.