Camunic

Camunic is an extinct and only partly understood language spoken during the first millennium BC in Val Camonica, an Alpine valley in what is now northern Italy famous for its extensive prehistoric rock art. It survives in roughly 170 short rock inscriptions carved in the Camunian alphabet, a local variant of the north Etruscan writing system, but the surviving material is too sparse and repetitive to allow full decipherment of the language itself. Scholars remain divided over its classification, with some proposing a relationship to the pre-Indo-European Tyrsenian languages such as Rhaetic and Etruscan and others favoring a Celtic origin reflecting the later arrival of Celtic-speaking peoples in the region. Camunic is best understood today as one of several poorly attested languages of the ancient Alps whose exact place in the linguistic map of pre-Roman Europe remains unresolved.