Math Finds Code in Ancient Scottish Symbols

April 9, 2010

The Picts, the confederation of Celtic tribes living in what is now Scotland, were believed to be an illiterate society by historians because they didn't leave a written record. Using applied mathematics, a team of researchers determined the symbols on Pictish artifacts are actually symbols of a written language.

Pictish inscriptions are expertly carved stones with highly stylized petroglyph images. Only some 500 inscriptions survive today. The stones, which only contain a few images each, were believed to be symbolic representations of heraldry instead of characters of a lexicographic written language.

Researchers at University of Exeter analyzed these inscriptions using the notion of Shannon entropy. A recent article in Scientific American described their study:

"Written languages are distinguishable from random sequences of symbols because they contain some statistical predictability. This predictability is measured by the notion of Shannon entropy, one of the keystone concepts of information theory."

The group's results were published in Proceedings of the Royal Society.

According to the Scientific American article, "A different team used a similar technique last year to suggest that the script of the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished between 2600 and 1900 B.C., is also a written language."

Read the full article here.

Source: Scientific American (March 31, 2010).

Image of The Aberlemno Serpent Stone, Class I Pictish stone via Wikipedia.