Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing

BBC News ^ | Monday, October 22, 2012 | Sean Coughlan

[SunkenCiv]

The world's oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.

This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level...

Dr Dahl's secret weapon is being able to see this writing more clearly than ever before... a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out light...

It's being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200BC and 2900BC in a region now in the south west of modern Iran...

The clay tablets were put inside this machine, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging System, which uses a combination of 76 separate photographic lights and computer processing to capture every groove and notch on the surface of the clay tablets.

It allows a virtual image to be turned around, as though being held up to the light at every possible angle...

But this is painstaking work. So far Dr Dahl has deciphered 1,200 separate signs, but he says that after more than 10 years study much remains unknown, even such basic words as "cow" or "cattle"...

He's discovered that the original texts seem to contain many mistakes -- and this makes it extremely tricky for anyone trying to find consistent patterns...

Even without knowing all the symbols, Dr Dahl says it's possible to work out the context of many of the messages on these tablets.

The numbering system is also understood, making it possible to see that much of this information is about accounts of the ownership and yields from land and people. They are about property and status, not poetry.

[TigersEye]

...but he says that after more than 10 years study much remains unknown, even such basic words as "cow" or "cattle"...

Context is everything. Once you get the rest the little things fall into place.

Send lawyers guns and money the "cow" has hit the fan!

[bgill]

You know that once they claim it's been decoded, someone will come along 10 years later and prove it's something totally different. It almost makes me want to carved a stone with gobblety goop and bury it in the backyard in hopes someone digs it up in 5000 years.

[Two Kids' Dad]

Civ, you come up with all sorts of interesting articles. Thanks for posting this one.

[sauron]

ITS A COOK BOOK!

To Serve Man

[a fool in paradise]

IBTIAGTM comments
(In Before The It’s All Greek To Me!)

[Revolting cat!]

Dude, it's a variation of a tea cracker the Euros call the Petit Beurre! I just bought a package that was made in Turkey

[SunkenCiv]

Beats me how it takes FORTY FIVE MINUTES to get the system to accept this new topic, but when it comes back to show it's been posted, there are two replies ahead.

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Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

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[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Renfield! To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, but Renfield posted it, and I agree, it’s a nice find!

[Textide]

That jumped out at me too.

could be about to be

I'm using that in the next report to my boss: "That project could be about to be finished."

[Rebelbase]

Maybe it’s just art?

[ZinGirl]

OMG. brilliant!

[wildandcrazyrussian]

Maybe it’s Old Egyptish from that Joseph Smith fellow!

[trebb]

Oogum oogum boogum boogum
boogum now baby you’re castin’ your spell on me...

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Of course without knowing what the sounds mean, this alphabet is worthless

In deciphering the Rosetta Stone, Champollion made the assumption that the language used in the Hieroglyphics was related to modern Coptic. From what is known of ancient middle eastern languages it may be possible to make inroads once sounds have been reconstructed.

[Condor51]

You're showing your age. Then again -- so am I ;-)

[Pecos]

Decoding individual letters is one thing, but why do they think they know how to pronounce the letters?

[GeronL]

I have been trying to study Korean, knowing how to pronounce the letters/symbols does nothing to tell me what the words mean. Now if the know of a similar language that they can study it would probably help.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

That was my point. Korean is something of an isolated language. Most languages have modern cousins, e.g., German and Dutch, any of the Scandinavian languages with one another, all of the Slavic Languages, most of the Romance languages except French. Manx and Erse. Hebrew and Aramaic and Arabic.

[GeronL]

Spoken Korean did get mothered by Chinese long ago, but written Korean is very different from other Eastern languages. Chinese might have thousands of different symbols but Korean has 24. Plus the subject-object-verb order is a bit strange to me.

Some of the literal translations are funny. “His neck is dry” means he is thirsty.