World's Oldest Runestone Found In Norway

phys.org...

I have no idea what this means but what the heck, I'll post the story. It says no one knows the origin of runestones, so I guess just another piece in a puzzle where the archaeologists only have 15 out of a thousand puzzle pieces.

Norwegian archaeologists believe they have found the world's oldest runestone inscribed almost 2,000 years ago, making it several centuries older than previous discoveries, they announced on Tuesday.

The square brown sandstone rock, measuring about 30 by 30 centimeters (12 by 12 inches), was found during the excavation of an ancient burial ground in late 2021, at Tyrifjorden northwest of Oslo, ahead of construction on a railway line.

Carbon dating of bones and wood found in a grave beside the rune suggest that it was inscribed sometime between year one and 250 AD, Oslo's Museum of Cultural History said.

Normally erected at gravesites, especially during the Viking era, runes are stones inscribed with runic letters, the oldest alphabet known in Scandinavia.

The discovery, which could date from the time of Jesus Christ, is "a dream for runologists", who study ancient runic alphabets, inscriptions and their history, the museum in Oslo said.

"We thought that the first ones in Norway and Sweden appeared in the years 300 or 400, but it turns out that some runestones could be even older than we previously believed", runologist Kristel Zilmer told Norwegian news agency NTB.

"It's a unique discovery", she said.

The origin of runestones remains largely a mystery.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Cool find , I agree "idiberug" is likely the name of the chap in the grave .... or strong magic keeping him in the grave.

Now this is good news

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

IDIBERUG means plague. So they are just slowly prepping us for the next plandemic said to come in about 100 days. :|

a reply to: gortex

Did you like the film 'The Resurrected' based on HP Lovecrafts Charles Dexter Ward? It's pretty fun.

But does it grant command of the elements if coupled with a sufficient energy source, ideally a crystal or companion beast bound to my arcane will?

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

I can read runes (a tiny bit) and confirm that my reading ("idiberug") matches mine.

Many runestones are grave markers - that said, there's not a lot of work done on them. They were not items of any special significance to most people and ended up incorporated into buildings (there's undoubtedly more of them around with the inscriptions turned so that they're not visible.

While I find this very impressive, it just baffles me that the Chinese had been writing for more than 2000 years earlier than these runes.

I wonder if there could be any connection between the bone script of ancient China and any of the western written forms, like the Norse runes in this account. I suppose it is a long shot, but I do remember the legendary "perhaps fraudulent" claims of red haired Caucasians found buried in China. I know, I know... thread drift.

originally posted by: Maxmars
While I find this very impressive, it just baffles me that the Chinese had been writing for more than 2000 years earlier than these runes.

I wonder if there could be any connection between the bone script of ancient China and any of the western written forms, like the Norse runes in this account. I suppose it is a long shot, but I do remember the legendary "perhaps fraudulent" claims of red haired Caucasians found buried in China. I know, I know... thread drift.

The "red haired Caucasians" are a real thing - the key being that they were found along the Silk Road where Europeans and Chinese mixed.

And no, there's no connection with the runes.

Writing develops when you get civilizations - big cities with a need for administration (i.e. taxes to buy the king a lovely new horse. Or six horses and a wife.) The Norse areas had much smaller populations -- nothing as large as early Shanghai or Beijing.

Things just keep getting older and older, as Graham Hancock says ….
Totally fascinating stuff !

a reply to: Maxmars

They were writing in parts of India for longer than three thousand years too. But since there were so many different languages there, it is harder to understand what many of the things actually mean. Tibet has some really old writings too.

Seems like writings from some cultures hit the science news more than other cultures history. Been that way for a real long time. Lots of writings on stones were destroyed by the crusaders to get rid of local history and replace it with Christianity.

I don't search for these things. I get them from blurbs on my cable screen saver mode and sometimes from the newspaper. I don't post them all, there were Roman burial grounds found in Israel from, IIRC, 200 AD. Didn't get around to posting that.

So I'm surprised this had gotten so much attention. I just figured it would get a handful of responses saying "That's cool" or some other nonsense.

Carry on, please. I have found this to be quite interesting.

a reply to: bluesfreak

Things just keep getting older and older, as Graham Hancock says

This stone and the life of Jesus occupy the same window of time, more or less.

What’s getting older and older? In paleoanthropology, it’s true, the evidence for social organisation, the use of fire and stone tools and so on does, indeed, seem to be emerging from earlier periods than was first assumed. Still, these discoveries aren’t cause for a major rethink of the narrative of human social and technical development. There have been a few surprises, like the unexpected evidence that Neanderthals made ‘art’, but nothing that demands a rewrite of the bigger story. Not as far as I know, anyway.

a reply to: rickymouse

They were writing in parts of India for longer than three thousand years too.

Sure. The world’s oldest actual writing that we know of dates back much further than that; it comes from Mesopotamia and it’s about 5,500 years old.

Potsherds inscribed with Brahmi script, some dating as early as 700BCE, have been found in large numbers in South India and Sri Lanka. Seals and coins not much more recent than this have also been found. But this isn’t news; Western scholars have known about them for a long time. I think the first were discovered in the nineteenth century. The script on them is hard to decipher, especially since we don’t know what language or languages they’re supposed to be. In India, the same script was often used to write different languages, and some of those languages have died out.

To put all this in context, Europe was late to the civilization party compared with India and the Middle East, but even in Europe there are examples of writing (the so-called ‘Linear’ scripts of Crete), one of which dates back almost 4,000 years).

The Harappan culture, which existed in northern India about 5,000 years ago, may or may not have had writing. The scientific jury is still out on that.

None of this supports any of Graham Hancock’s claims, by the way. It’s all mainstream scholarship.