In March 2010, Émile Fradin, a modest peasant farmer from central France, died at the age of 103. To his grave he took the secret behind one of the most controversial archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. A discovery which put into question the very origins of the written word and the paternity of European culture. It was the uncovering of peculiar artefacts would come to be known as the Glozel runes. The discovery of the Glozel runes On the first day of March 1924, a not yet 18-year-old Fradin was ploughing his family’s field in the hamlet of Glozel, when his cow stumbled into a hole. When he and his grandfather, Claude, looked closer, they discovered a mass of broken stone, under which lay an underground chamber. Within, they discovered pottery fragments, carved bones, and a peculiar clay tablet covered in bizarre characters that neither of the two could decipher. The family requested a subsidy for excavation works to be carried out, but were refused by the regional authority. With that disappointment, it seemed as though the discovery would fade into obscurity. However, the following year, news of Fradin’s unusual clay tablet reached the ears of the physician and amateur archeologist, Antonin Morlet. By the end of May 1925, Morlet began the first of his excavations.4 Within the first two years alone, he had amassed some 3,000 finds.