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Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of Unknowns (wikenigma.org.uk)

submitted 3 weeks ago by sag@lemm.ee to c/internetisbeautiful@lemm.ee

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From the Start-page:

Wikenigma is a unique wiki-based resource specifically dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge.

Listing scientific and academic questions to which no-one, anywhere, has yet been able to provide a definitive answer. [ 1010 so far ]

That's to say, a compendium of so-called 'Known Unknowns'.

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 9 points 3 weeks ago

Ooooooh, this is fun! I'm checking the languages section, here are a few notes on some items in the "Language" section. Mostly to pinpoint what is unknown.

Albanian: we know that it is Indo-European, and belongs to its own branch. The main unknowns are 1) ancestors (is it related to Illyrian?) and 2) settlement time.

Ancient Macedonian: we know that it's close to Ancient Greek, we simply don't know how much. (It's certainly closer than to modern Slavic Macedonian.)

Basque

Easier to explain with a map of the languages of Iberia before the Roman invasion of it:

Basque is certainly a relative of Aquitanian, and probably its descendant. Based on placenames Iberian is probably a relative too; and personally I suspect that Tartesian might be part of the family.

In that region those languages predate Latin/Romance. And they probably predate Celtic languages there too. So, basically: they were already in Iberia and Gallia before the Indo-European languages.

Beyond that, it's unknown.

Southwest Paleohispanic Scripts:

They're likely for Tartesian (see map above). Sadly even if my hypothesis that Tartesian is Vasconic is true, that might help as much as trying to decipher Hindi based on German or vice versa.

The Voynich Manuscript:

One way to split the "unknownness" is

is this language or babble?
if it's language, is it natural or made up?
is the script natural or made up?

My suspicion is that it is language, a natural language, and a natural script that got lost; either because the language was lost too, or because its speakers shifted to the Latin alphabet.

It's specially worth checking if it doesn't match some Romani language.