Introduction

The “Dispilio Inscription” c.5260 +/- 40 B.C. (dated by C14 at Dimokritos Laboratories in Athens and c.A4 in size) is perhaps the oldest “inscription” currently known. It dates to approximately 37 centuries before the Minoan Phaistos Disk which is approximately 37 centuries Before Present. Along with other examples of possible Neolithic Communication such as the “Tartaria Tablets” in Romania, approximately contemporary with the “Dispilio Inscription” c.5300 B.C., it raises the question of whether there was a Neolithic Code of Communication or even “Neolithic Script(s)”? The subject must be ‘studiable-readable-understandable’. The current dbase has 200-300 different signs and c.1000 “inscriptions” from the Neolithic period. It is very difficult to be certain but based on a drawing there seem to be c.100 signs of “Neolithic Script(s)” (“NS”) on the “Dispilio Inscription” (as opposed to c. 20 signs on the “Tartaria Tablets” “TT”). Is that enough to identify a syllabic script, if so what language is it writing? Is it possible to recognize phonetic linguistic crypto-analytic patterns in the ‘text’ with statistical frequency analysis but can one then proceed to decode/decipher it and return it to plain text i.e. to be ‘understandable’, after being both ‘studiable’ and ‘readable’? Could c.10×10 i.e. c.100 signs be compared quantitatively to the first lines of the Iliad and/or Odyssey c.4000 years older than the Trojan War?

  1. If alphabetic i.e. each sign represents a letter, then approximately equivalent to the first two or three lines of the Iliad and/or Odyssey.
  2. If syllabic i.e. each sign represents a syllable, then approximately equivalent to the first seven or eight lines of the Iliad and/or Odyssey.
  3. If ideographic i.e. each sign represents a word, then approximately equivalent to the first fourteen or fifteen lines of the Iliad and/or Odyssey.

There are 3 systems of writing in the world.

  1. Alphabetic Scripts = 10s of signs.
  2. Syllabic Scripts = 100s of signs.
  3. Ideographic script = 1000s of signs.

The “Dispilio Inscription” (“DI”) of the “Neolithic Script(s)” (“NS”) is most probably neither an alphabetic not an ideographic script, so by a process of elimination, it is most likely to be a syllabic script (maximum 232-242-292, probably substantially less) if it is indeed ‘writing’ phonetically representing a spoken language of Neolithic Dispilio 4000 years before the Trojan War. Τhere is also Mycenaean pottery found within the fallen stones at the Neolithic ‘peribolos’ and the Mycenaean Linear B inscription “TE-RE-DA” or “DA-RE-TE” on a pithos from Aiani in Mycenaean Macedonia in North Greece, Hellas. This is a possible Bronze Age Mycenaean name ending in –DAS or -THP as the owner of the pithos, which shows continuity in West Macedonia in North Greece from Neolithic Stone Age to Mycenaean Bronze Age and indeed there was a dynasty of Macedonian Kings in the 4 th Century BC called Derdas. Curioser and Curioser. Of course it might not even be a “script” phonetically representing a language but a “Code of Communication” such as music, art, computer programming, body or sign language.

Bibliography

Early Balkan “Scripts” and the ancestry of Linear A (1992)
Balkan Neolithic Scripts (1999)
Was There a Script in Final Neolithic Greece? (2009)
From Minoan Crete to the Neolithic Danube and Beyond? (2010)
Radiocarbon dating of the Neolithic lakeside settlement of dispilio, Kastoria, Northern Greece (2014)