400-year-old letter revealed the lost language

An archaeologist said: 400-year-old letter have revealed a previously unknown language once spoken by indigenous peoples of northern Peru.

Penned by an unknown Spanish author and lost for four centuries, the tattered piece of paper was pulled from the remains of an ancient Spanish colonial church in 2008. But a team of scientists has only recently exposed the importance of the words written on the flip side of the letter.

The early 17th-century author had translated Spanish numbers uno, dos, tres into a mysterious language never seen by modern scholars.

Quilter said: The newfound native language may have borrowed from Quechua, a language still spoken by indigenous peoples of Peru. Some of the scholars suggest the two languages are in fact the same tongue that had been misidentified as distinct languages by early Spanish scribes.

The letter was found during archaeology excavations of the Magdalena de Cao Viejo church at the El Brujo Archaeological Complex in northern Peru. Quilter also stated that Archaeologists live on other people's misfortunes.

Language Hints at variety of Cultures:

Finding the new language helps to strengthen the rich diversity of cultures found in early colonial Americas, Quilter said.

Every location, from Massachusetts to Peru, it was a confrontation of a much more diverse group of people. In case, colonialists from many parts of Europe were grouped into the Spanish and in the Americas there were many people who spoke different languages and had different customs, he also noted.

"It truly shows how rich and varied that world was."