Eva Maria Spekhorstová

I graduated one year sooner from the Pražské Humanitní Gymnázium and will study for my Bachelor degrees in Middle-Eastern studies (Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde) and mathematics at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau. Currently, I speak and learn 48 languages, both modern and ancient. Personally, I find languages that haven’t been deciphered yet the most fascinating and exciting. One of these is called Etruscan, which I have decided to dedicate my academic research to. It had been spoken in ancient Italy, namely in Tuscany and Lazio, from the 8th century BC up until the 2nd century AD. Even though it may not seem like it, the Etruscans greatly influenced the Roman culture, introducing a new script, new and foreign artistic forms and religious ideas, rules regarding urbanism and literature…. All in all, I like to call them the overlooked (and sometimes ignored) co-parents of European culture! In studying both archaeology and mathematics, I strive to decipher this long-lost language using the methods of mathematical and computational linguistics, and uncover some of the most mysterious aspects of the Etruscan civilization altogether. Language is culture, language is folklore, and language is human history.