A Scratched Hint of Ancient Ties Stirs National Furies in Europe
Czech archaeologists say marks found on a cattle bone are sixth-century Germanic runes, in a Slavic settlement. The find has provoked an academic and nationalist brawl.
An archaeological excavation in the Czech Republic at Lany, near the border with Austria, a few yards from where a bone scratched with Germanic runes was found. Credit.Akos Stiller for The New York Times
May 16, 2021, 10:40 a.m. ET
LANY, Czech Republic In a region long fought over by rival ethnic and linguistic groups, archaeologists in the Czech Republic have discovered something unusual in these turbulent parts: evidence that peoples locked in hostility for much of the modern era got along in centuries past.