Shannon Entropy

[David Morris]

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-scotland-written-language.html

The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved
stones that new research has just determined contain the written
language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland
from 300 to 843.

The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the
Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to
heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long
lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that
lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.

"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the
writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735)
writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British,
Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery
News

"We know that the three other languages were -- and are -- complex
spoken languages, so there is every indication that Pictish was also a
complex spoken language," added Lee, a professor in the School of
Biosciences at the University of Exeter.

He and colleagues Philip Jonathan and Pauline Ziman analyzed the
engravings, found on the few hundred known Pictish Stones. The
researchers used a mathematical process known as Shannon entropy to
study the order, direction, randomness and other characteristics of
each engraving.