The design suggests a sophisticated level of craftsmanship, another fascinating feature of the elusive artifact, suggesting that the message held significance.
But dating the mysterious and groundbreaking tablet currently remains out of reach. Archaeologists believe the maker drilled the message upon this stone 14,000 years ago, placing it somewhere between the late Bronze and Early Iron Age.
Besides its immediate, unarguable importance as an archaeological artifact, as it holds a previously unseen writing system, it may have some connection to the legendary system of writing referenced in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts.
Furthermore, it might prove that cultural exchange was happening between the Caucasus and the neighboring region, and it might just change everything we know about an ancient writing system in an area “long considered peripheral” in the study of the earliest human text.
A brand new writing system from an untapped archaeological hotbed
In 2021, fishermen on Lake Bashplemi in Georgia’s famed Dmanisi region accidentally caught sight of the tablet. It had been a dry season, so an unusual object buried under lake silt stuck out, GB News reports.
What appears to be a series of indecipherable symbols, such as three horizontal lines and a swirl at the bottom, experts explain, is actually “developed and refined” for its age, though that’s unconfirmed.
The inscription even suggests remarkable skill. The maker used a conical drill to the first lay the symbols into the stone. To create a smooth series of characters, they employed rounded tools, which shows a fair amount of work went into laying the message into the stone.
Experts then speculate that the message might communicate military spoils, a construction project, or offerings to a deity.
In an attempt to draw connections with other ancient texts, similarities can be found between the new text and the Proto-Kartvelian script from the 4 millennium BCE and seals from pre-Christian Georgia, according to Archaeology News.
Moreover, it contains traces of early Caucasian scripts, notably Georgian Mrgvlovani and Albanian, along with Phoenician and Proto-Sinaitic systems from the Near East. A hotbed of very early writing systems, in other words, that might suggest interaction occurred between these ancient groups.
“Most of the symbols used therein resemble ones found in the scripts of the Middle East, as well as those of geographically remote countries such as India, Egypt, and West Iberia,” wrote researchers in a new study in the Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology.
However, regardless, this is an entirely new form of text.
“The Bashplemi inscription does not repeat any script known to us.”
Will the legendary Dmanisi finally be excavated?
Dmanisi holds some of the earliest Eurasian hominin remains; thus, the unique artifact comes from a historical location inhabited since the early Bronze Age, as per GB News.
