I think that people travel, and with them do cultures and languages.
Never seen that old ”turkish” though, pretty cool!
fiendishrabbit on
I think it has more to do with their intended use. Both are intended to be used on stone, wood and metal (ie, chiseled in). That limits the type of shapes used.
So it’s a case of convergent evolution rather than any shared heritage.
arkemiffo on
I think it’s a forced coincidence.
I’m by no means an expert on the matter, but it looks to me like you’re looking at the kokturk alphabet here. The kokturk alphabet was used mainly between the 8th and 10th century. This was also the time of the vikings, where the runic alphabet (called the Futharks, there are 2 main of them, elder and younger) were already in use, for a few hundred years at least (I believe the first proper inscription we have found is from around the 4th century). Most likely the alphabets developed independently.
The reason I’m saying “forced” coincidence though is that from little I read about the kokturk language now, about 3-4 minutes on Wikipedia, is that most inscription of the language is found on obilisks. This means carving in stones. Just like the Futharks When carving in stone, you want as straight lines as possible. There will be some exceptions, as there are here, and are in the Futharks. This mean you’ll get a lot of letters with straight lines, or diagonal lines, and if that’s your base, chances are you’re going to end up with very similar looking shapes.
Yet again though, I want to stress, I’m by no means an expert, and there are less than unlikely chances that the 2 groups have met in prehistory as both were known to have trade routes far beyond their own borders. However, I’m not convinced that the contact they would’ve had is enough to influence each other in such a big way. The Futharks are more likely redevelopments of old italic scripts, which in itself is a redevelopment of the old Phoenician script.
3 Comments
I think that people travel, and with them do cultures and languages.
Never seen that old ”turkish” though, pretty cool!
I think it has more to do with their intended use. Both are intended to be used on stone, wood and metal (ie, chiseled in). That limits the type of shapes used.
So it’s a case of convergent evolution rather than any shared heritage.
I think it’s a forced coincidence.
I’m by no means an expert on the matter, but it looks to me like you’re looking at the kokturk alphabet here. The kokturk alphabet was used mainly between the 8th and 10th century. This was also the time of the vikings, where the runic alphabet (called the Futharks, there are 2 main of them, elder and younger) were already in use, for a few hundred years at least (I believe the first proper inscription we have found is from around the 4th century). Most likely the alphabets developed independently.
The reason I’m saying “forced” coincidence though is that from little I read about the kokturk language now, about 3-4 minutes on Wikipedia, is that most inscription of the language is found on obilisks. This means carving in stones. Just like the Futharks When carving in stone, you want as straight lines as possible. There will be some exceptions, as there are here, and are in the Futharks. This mean you’ll get a lot of letters with straight lines, or diagonal lines, and if that’s your base, chances are you’re going to end up with very similar looking shapes.
Yet again though, I want to stress, I’m by no means an expert, and there are less than unlikely chances that the 2 groups have met in prehistory as both were known to have trade routes far beyond their own borders. However, I’m not convinced that the contact they would’ve had is enough to influence each other in such a big way. The Futharks are more likely redevelopments of old italic scripts, which in itself is a redevelopment of the old Phoenician script.