Pictish symbols revealed as a language through application of Shannon entropy

[J3L2404]

http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/03/26/rspa.2010.0041.full

[dood]

Mark Liberman at Language Log has doubts: [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2227]

[arethuza]

Another mystery from the same region is how they managed to melt thousands of tons of rocks to make forts with vitrified walls:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort

The Tap o' Noth in particular is rather impressive.

[BerislavLopac → arethuza]

They didn't -- it was melted by the dragons that attacked those forts. ;)

[DennisP]

A long time ago I read that someone applied a statistical test for language to human DNA. They found that DNA which codes for proteins failed the test, but "junk" DNA passed.

I'm sure there's a mundane explanation, but it was fun speculating about what it might say.