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Ancient Ice Cream Cone Found
September 15, 2006National Geographic News is reporting that a stone tablet has been found in Mexico that contains an ancient writing system lost for 3,000 years, or at least twelve days. The article about this stone tablet can be found here .
Now, I'm not one to doubt this sort of thing, but if you follow the link to the large photo and take a good look at this thing - well what do you think? It looks like a freeware dingbats font I might have downloaded off of "ancientlostwritingsystemfonts.com" In particular, look at glyph 12. If that isn't an ice cream cone I don't know what is. I'm also pretty convinced that 57 is a beer, and I KNOW I saw 7 crawling around my basement.
At the moment Experts Who Know This Stuff seem split on whether it's real or not. They're still trying to answer basic questions, such as: what flavors of ice cream did they have? Were the cones those "cake" cones, or those hard-as-rock "sugar" cones? How far off was the waffle cone? Had these ancient peoples developed the two-scoop cone yet?
The Experts HAVE figured out an important distinction between three of the glyphs. 1 apparently shows the "icky bug" which would cause ancient 3,000 year-old wives to scream for their husbands who would summarily smash it with little thought. 23 was a clover mite, which as everyone knows you should never smash because it will leave a big orange stain on everything, including ancient people's drywall and is extremely tough to get out. 50 shows the "poisonous bug" which was also icky, and would probably stain walls and carpeting too, but was also poisonous and had to be killed from a distance, usually with a long club, a rock, or a can of RAID®.
Hopefully we'll know more about all of this soon. In the meantime I'm downloading the other 3,000 year old fonts from ancientlostwritingsystemfonts.com just so I have them before it's all the rage.
Comments
Hey, 45 is probably a pineapple, and I'm betting 38 is a tube of toothpaste.
Posted by: Angie | September 15, 2006 11:53 AM
Hey Carl, the answer to your question on double dips is obviously YES! Check out number 56, if that isn't a triple or cuadruple dipper, I don't know why they came up with this font!
And 14 is probably called "crying child", as the cone heads for the street/ floor/car's upholstry. Then 55 may be an octopus too!.
Keep up the good work finding these esoteric articles.
Can't wait for the mystery of the letters to be revealed.
Posted by: mark | September 15, 2006 12:58 PM
I don't know, Carl - #7 looks more like a grenade to me. I hope you don't have grenades crawling around in your basement. #10 looks like an old-fashioned shaving brush, and I see several pineapples (#45, 53 & 59 for sure, and maybe #16). I thought #3 might be another one but decided it looks more like a bunch (stalk?) of celery. You sure #57 looks like a beer? I don't drink the stuff, but that looks more like a flashlight to me. Or maybe a barber pole...
Actually, the whole thing looks like advertising icons. Maybe they've found a really really old ad agency?
Posted by: Susan B. | September 15, 2006 2:54 PM
While you're at it, check out the photo with this OTHER article on National Geographic's website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060915-python-ewe.html
Posted by: Sue T | September 15, 2006 5:32 PM