This is pretty cool, so I thought I'd share. A team of scientists looked at how symbols on Pictish artifacts followed each other, because the sequences tend to follow certain patterns. For example, in English "q" is almost always followed by a "u", and "w" is followed more frequently by "h" than "s" or "t". What they found was the Pictish symbols had more in common with written language than, say, the pictograph instructions that come with IKEA furniture. So while no one today knows how to read Pictish, it looks like they could.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=information-age-math-finds-code-in-2010-03-31

Very interesting - nice link.

What they found was the Pictish symbols had more in common with written language than, say, the pictograph instructions that come with IKEA furniture. So while no one today knows how to read Pictish, it looks like they could.

Now, if only they could do IKEA furniture in Pictish - I for one have problems with the pictographic instructions!