The race to decipher the Indus Valley script
Posted On: Mar 10th, 2017 at 23:38
India / Pakistan
Staying with the Indus Valley culture, once again their undeciphered script makes interesting reading.
Granted, that was my worst pun to date, but never mind…
One thing you must never do in a piece of writing is mention a film, either by quote or comparison. That’s the only flaw in this very well written piece by Mallory Locklear.
The Indus Valley script is extremely difficult to decipher for many reasons. Firstly, there is no trace of their culture – no one has any idea who they were, where they came from, or where they went, so that removes the possibility of tracing their language. Secondly, the seals found do not have long enough pieces of writing to be able to figure out the structure of the text, and that means the writing may just be names of families, of measures from trade goods, or something else. There is no doubt, however, that the script IS a language because the symbols do follow the rules of a linguistic system. Others disagree with that idea though, and believe the seals contain just symbols. I am certain it’s a language, so there’s another one of my predictions that is bound to come true!
