![]() Its largest excavated cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, exhibit levels urban planning that rival modern standards, including grid-like streets, water management and the oldest toilets. That Lesser-known Great CivilizationĤ,000 years ago the Indus Valley civilization held an estimated one million people spread over a Texas-sized region, twice the area of contemporary Egypt or Mesopotamia. That is, they argue the Indus inscriptions were not true writing - visible signs that unambiguously represent speech - but an alternate symbolic system similar to emblems, conveying more general meanings.ĭespite naysayers and challenges, decipherment efforts have progressed in the past decade, thanks to better databases of texts and new computational methods for finding patterns among the signs. Hence the reported threats to scholars immersed in the matter.įurthermore, some researchers go so far as to deny the existence of an underlying language. Rival ethnic groups claim to descend from this once-great civilization and knowing its language would help cement cultural ties. There is no consensus on how to read them, although dozens of speculative decipherments have been proposed over the past century.Ĭomplicating efforts, the underlying language the script is tied to is disputed, and there are complex modern-day political ramifications to the question. They include texts of the Olmec and Zapotec (Mesoamerican cultures preceding the Classic Maya), Proto-Elamite (writings of the earliest civilization of present-day Iran) and Rongorongo of Easter Island.īut if it’s fame you’re after (as well as intense scrutiny and even death threats ) there’s no better challenge than the symbols of the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished some 4,000 years ago in present-day Pakistan and northwest India.įrom this culture, archaeologists have recovered several thousand short inscriptions, most with just 4 or 5 signs. Fear not, for there are actually a number of ancient writing systems still to be cracked. ![]() Today, when we’ve unlocked the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya writing and hosts of far lesser known scripts, it seems as though there’s nothing left for enterprising epigraphers.
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