| | MetaphysicalRunes| Runes Article | The runes were introduced to, or invented by, the Germanic peoples in the 1st or 2nd century. (The oldest known runic inscription dates to ca. the 160s and is found on a comb discovered in the bog of Vimose, Funen. The inscription reads harja; a disputed candidate for a 1st century inscription is on the Meldorf fibula). This period may correspond to the late Proto-Germanic or Common Germanic stage linguistically, with a continuum of dialects not yet clearly separated into the three branches of later centuries, viz. North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. No distinction is made in surviving runic inscriptions between long and short vowels, although such a distinction was certainly present phonologically in the spoken languages of the time. Similarly, there are no signs for labiovelars in the Elder Futhark (such signs were introduced in both the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc and the Gothic alphabet as variants of p)
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