An alphabet carved in stone
The Camonica Valley in the Italian Alps contains one of the largest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs in the world. Estimates place the total number of figures at over 300,000, carved into the valley's sandstone surfaces over a period of 10,000 years. This massive outdoor archive earned the area the status of being Italy's first UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. The creators of this rock art, the ancient Camunni people, recorded figures of animals, warriors, huts, and ritual scenes.
Around the 5th century BCE, a new type of carving appeared alongside the images: writing. The Camunni developed their own alphabet, a variant of a north-Etruscan script, to write their now-extinct language. Approximately 300 of these inscriptions have been found, most consisting of just a few words. They mark a moment in the valley's history, when inhabitants began to record their language in a durable, visible form. The practice of carving inscriptions seems to have ended around the time the Romans subjugated the region in 16 BCE.
The Camunic language mystery
The Camunic alphabet has been fully transliterated, with phonetic values assigned to each letter. Scholars found complete alphabets, or abecedaria, carved into the rocks at sites like Foppe di Nadro, which helped establish the script. The writing can run from left to right, right to left, and sometimes alternates direction in a style known as boustrophedon. Despite knowing how to read the letters, the meaning of the words remains elusive. The corpus of texts is too small for a full decipherment.
The classification of the Camunic language is subject to intense debate. Some researchers propose it belongs to the same family as Etruscan, citing shared words. Others argue for an Indo-European origin, possibly as a form of Celtic language. This Celtic hypothesis is supported by statistical analysis of the texts and the presence of certain grammatical forms. The inscriptions often appear to be personal names or dedications, perhaps to local deities. For now, the messages of the Camunni remain in the Alpine rock, a linguistic puzzle from the Iron Age.