Lost language unearthed in a letter

[Troy Anderson]

(Reuters) - Archaeologists say scrawl on the back of a letter recovered from a 
17th century dig site reveals a previously unknown language spoken by indigenous 
peoples in northern Peru.
A team of international archaeologists found the letter under a pile of adobe 
bricks in a collapsed church complex near Trujillo, 347 miles north of Lima. The 
complex had been inhabited by Dominican friars for two centuries.
"Our investigations determined that this piece of paper records a number system 
in a language that has been lost for hundreds of years," Jeffrey Quilter, an 
archaeologist at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, told 
Reuters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68M40S20100923
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