A piece of writing organization prepare by one of the macrocosm ’s other urban societies has given linguist nothing but heartache since it was first discovered on an opaque Lucy Stone seal in the ancient city of Harappa , in what is now Pakistan , 150 geezerhood ago . Hoping to finally crack the code , authorities have now announced a $ 1 million award to anyone who manages to decode the so - called Indus Valley Script ( IVS ) .
Also known as the Harappan Script , the IVS was make up by theIndus Valley Civilizationwhich emerged in the realm encompassed by northern India and Pakistan some 5,300 years ago . Known for its palisade city , the Bronze Age civilisation thrived for several centuries before mysteriously vanishing , leave archaeologists with few clues as to how these ancient people know .
The first seal featuring the IVS was found by Sir Alexander Cunningham – the founder of the Archaeological Survey of India – in 1875 . scratch on the Harlan Stone slab was an paradigm of a bull come with by two stars and a series of six indecipherable characters that Cunningham account as “ certainly not Native American letters ” .
Little is known about the civilization that invented the script.Image credit: DARSHAN KUMAR/Shutterstock.com
Several thousand case have since been recovered , each sport a central animal and a forgetful sequence of part . Typically consisting of between four and six signs , the book are made more unmanageable to represent by their exasperate brevity , with no lengthy inscription having been found .
Unlike other ancient writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyph , the IVS does not boast on any known multilingual artefact such as the Rosetta Stone , which could be used to cross - reference the handwriting with other known speech . However , because all of the examples found so far appear on small items of pottery or stone seals used for commerce , it seems reasonable to simulate that their content relates to unremarkable action and transactions rather than apparitional concepts .
Sick of waiting for researchers to snap the code , Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin – Chief Minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu – has now announced a “ cash swag of $ 1 millionto person or organisation that decrypt the script to the satisfaction of archaeological experts . ” With any fortune , the bonus will prove as successful as theVesuvius Challenge , which was launched in 2023 and offered alike rewards to anyone who could reveal the ancient script on a series of charred scroll from Herculaneum , which was obliterated along with Pompeii by a volcanic eruption in 79 CE .
In that particular example , the script was in a known language – Latin – yet had become illegible after being carbonized by the acute warmth produced by the volcanic eruption . Within a year of the challenge being arrange , the idealistic prize was claimed by a team of starter who used artificial intelligence activity toreveal the textwithout damaging the scrolls , discovering a passage that contained philosophical reflexion about the delight of eating .
If Stalin ’s contest can produce a achiever , then it may inspire other citizen scientific discipline initiatives purpose at decode likewise ancient undeciphered scripts , include the enigmatical " Linear A " writing system get up by the Minoans some 5,000 years ago . Based on the island of Crete , this legendary Bronze Age civilization is often cited as Europe ’s first literate society , yet the text it invented has yet to be unlock by investigator .
Elsewhere , theRongorongoglyphs found on wooden artifact on Easter Island have leave linguists puzzled by their stark lack of similarity to any experience writing system , while the 240 - pageVoynich Manuscriptrepresents one of the most famed examples of undeciphered textbook anywhere in the worldly concern . think to have been write somewhere in Europe around 500 year ago , the mysterious book look to cut through everything from uranology to flora , yet no one has any idea what it really says .
