Hello and welcome to another Fun Fact From Flora ,

This one is NOT about fish.

I know, Nicki Manaj, subscriber to this email chain, I hear you. But this is cool trust me.

The oldest readable sentence written using the first ever alphabet has been found on the side of an ivory comb.

What does it say?! I hear you cry What secrets does it tell us about the past life of humans gone by?

Well, before we get there let’s have a little think about what we know about written language. Writing first emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt an estimated 5200 years ago. But those first systems didn’t have an alphabet. Think of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. They were typically based on signs to represent words and syllables. The alphabet, as a concept, came later.

Scientists are pretty argumentative about when exactly that happened, mostly due to a lack of archaeological evidence. People tend to settle on around 4200 — 3800 years ago.

But back to the comb.

The message on this comb is written in an ancient Canaanite language spoken at Tel Lachish in southern Israel and is dated to be about 3700 years old. The next oldest sentence we have is about 400 years younger, so this is pretty exciting stuff.

Alright I"ve built the suspense enough.

Do you want to know what this ancient message is about?

Head lice.

Yup.

I know.

The words are carefully carved in 1-3mm letters and it reads May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.

Fantastic, eh?

Amusingly, this deciphering was aided by the fact that there are still pieces of exoskeleton from lice that were actually removed using this comb.

ISN"T THAT AMAZING?! If that isn’t cool — I am sorry I don’t know what is.

Hope you enjoyed this land-based foray into the scientific world.

Lots of love,

Flora

A bug themed falling over: