Writing: Caveman Style!

Ok people so yeah we actually did carve our phrase into stone. No biggie. The funny part is that the actual carving took the least amount of time. The two most difficult parts of creating our phrase was the actual attempt of finding an authentic phrase in our language and then trying to get the phrase to fit on the stone.

The difficulty in finding an authentic phrase for our group was that we had to first find a phrase in the Brythonic language that we wanted to use, after that we had to write down that same language using the phonetic Ogham writing system. This is the writing system that you can see inscribed on the stone itself.

The second difficulty was in making sure the whole phrase fit on the stone. I mentioned to the group that there was not much room for error on stone and that it would probably be a good idea to write the phrase on paper that was the same length as the stone as a rough draft. Then we used this draft as a model to CAREFULLY chisel and hammer the letters into the stone and we successfully completed our phrase! My job was to document the process with photos and videos, I did take a stab (no pun intended) at the chisel and hammer on the stone and ended up cracking the stone so I figured it would be best to let Dane take over again.

The finished product was beautiful, it really did look like an ancient record of some important speech or memorial. I was able to learn the challenges of trying to recreate a medium and language and the little tips and nuances you learn with going through the painstaking process. When Dr. Burton mentioned in class that the people who created books and other forms of print patented the process itself, i thought for a moment that i almost knew enough little tips just from the nigh before of the process of inscribing Ogham onto stone to patent it!

I look forward to the challenge of adding to the stone the Mayan and english languages and actually create our own rosetta stone. Hopefully all will go well and I this time the process will go a little smoother as we have become more masterful at our craft of stone carving.