Bone Of Contention? Six Letters That Could Rewrite Slavic History

Alena Slamova and Jiri Machacek with the fragment of cow rib that could change a lot of what we know about the early Slavs

It had long been believed that Slavs had not adopted a writing system until the ninth century, when they started using Glagolitic script introduced by the Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius. But that is some three centuries after the inscription on the Lany bone, which has been dated using genetic and radiocarbon methods to around 600 A.D.

An Old Debate

The idea that Slavs had learned writing earlier than the arrival of these Byzantine proselytizers during the time of the Great Moravian Empire has long been a matter of debate.

As far back as the 19th century, some prominent Slavonic scholars had posited the idea that Slavs had already achieved a level of literacy in the pre-Christian era. One of the main cornerstones of their argument had been a text by a Bulgarian monk and scholar named Chernorizets Hrabar, whose work from around 900 A.D. made reference to a system of writing using "strokes and incisions" that he said had been adopted by the early Slavs.

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