Early American "Rosetta Stone"
A fascinating article in National Geographic reports on attempts to decipher a slate found at the 400-year old site in Virginia. Researchers speculate that it may be a kind of lexicon, of English and Algonquian. The article includes a link to the interactive site on colonial Jamestown, one of the best historical sites on the web (that's your editor speaking, not National Geographic). Check it out: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100113-jamestown-tablet-slate-american-rosetta-stone/
posted by Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary at
1:08 PM
2 Comments:
As a writer you might be interested to know that, according to the Virginia Gazette, the senior archaeologist at Jamestown was unaware of the Thomas Harriot phonetic alphabet. He learned of it from an amateur volunteer who in turn learned of it from a Williamsburg writer who had published a biography of Harriot two years before. In the biography, the writer speculated that Captain John Smith and George Percy, two of the original adventurers, would have seen Harriot's work on the Algonquian language before they sailed to America. This writer showed the volunteer the phonetic alphabet during a lecture several months before the National Geographic article. The volunteer informed the archaeologist, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Williamsburg writer is Aleck Loker
Thank you very much for this interesting supplement to the story.
Post a Comment
<< Home