Posted on 02/05/2014 8:13:08 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) last week unearthed a Harappan seal from Karanpura in the Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan. “The seal consists of two Harappan characters, with a typical unicorn as the motif and a pipal leaf depicted in front of an animal. There is a knob behind the seal,” says VN Prabhakar, superintending archaeologist, who led the ASI team.
Maintaining that the discovery ‘confirms’ that the site belongs to the mature Harappan period, the time when the civilization was at its peak (2600 BC to 1900 BC), he said: “A cubicle chert weight was also unearthed in a different house complex. Both the seal and the weight establishes that the people of this area participated in commercial transactions.”
We are collecting charcoal sample to date the habitation through radio carbon dating, he said. The excavation at Karanpura, which started in 2012, had earlier brought to light two broad cultural levels, namely the early and the mature Harappan age.
Besides artefacts, house complexes built of mud bricks of early Harappan and mature Harappan periods were also unearthed.
(Excerpt) Read more at hindustantimes.com ...
Wow. Amazing find.
Totally weird!
Just an average, run-of-the-mill everyday --- unicorn.
Well, al-righty then.
I see a crack in the block and a horse’s ear. I’m not seeing a unicorn here.
The last time I studied about this civilization, the glyphs were not decipherable; does anyone know if that’s still the case?
It would appear this is an attempt to do just that. Don't you agree ?
Not that they have it correct or anything, but they are trying.
It looks like a business card.
An advertisement for a local Horse Stable ?
Or the address “01 Unicorn and Fern” ?
I didn’t know that unicorns wore high heels.
You need to close one eye.
I think those are western style boots. The horse appears to have been a line dancer.
The seal of the owner named ‘Whilrake Asleaf’ by my deciphering.
I think Sumer and Akkad are still considered the oldest civilizations though
Generally the Harappan seals are considered to be a form of writing; there’s a couple of computer science geeks who claim they’ve fed in all the seals and their program has determined that it *doesn’t* hide a language. Most regard the language expressed by the script as being agglutinative, which probably isn’t surprising, since a great big chunk of Asia (and some outliers, like Turkey) speaks agglutinative languages. The largest agglutinative population in modern India (I believe) is Dravidian, but I don’t believe anyone has linked spoken Dravidian with the seals. I’d be surprised if a bilingual is never found, and I’d also be surprised if Harappan doesn’t turn out to be a language isolate, more or less.
“No more rhymes! I mean it!”
“Anybody want a peanut?”
“Ahh!”
I am sorry, I will not tarry.
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