A Rosetta Stone for the Indus script

A Rosetta Stone for the Indus script

Do you love a good mystery and ancient texts? Rajesh Rao sure does. He is a computational neuroscientist at my alma mater, the University of Washington in Seattle. He has devoted much of his professional life to cracking "the mother of all crossword puzzles": How to decipher the 4000 year old Indus script

To do this, Dr Rao uses computational modeling to understand the human mind in two ways: first, he develops computer models to describe how human minds think, and then second, he applies these models to the task of deciphering the 4,000-year-old script of the Indus valley civilization. This interesting video provides a glimpse into his methods and logic:

Rajesh Rao is fascinated by "the mother of all crossword puzzles": How to decipher the 4000 year old Indus script. At TED 2011 he tells how he is enlisting modern computational techniques to read the Indus language, the key piece to understanding this ancient civilization.

Well I wish Dr Rao the best of luck. I'd love for him to succeed in my lifetime. It will be wonderful to find out what all these ancient texts have been hidden from the world for centuries. I wonder how many of the ancient stories will be similar to others of the period from around the world.

Wouldn't it be amazing if when it's cracked it tells us another version of events dating back thousands of years BC.

Stay tuned.

It's amazing how we can get computer to think like humans. Quite ironic though.

Most fascinating topic - of which I had never heard before - of the week, thanks for posting it.

The guy in the video did a perfect job on explaining the issue without letting it become boring for a single second. I never thought people from 4000 years ago had stamps and parcels.

Good luck with deciphering the whole language, seems like the work of a life time.

Originally posted by SLAYER69

Wouldn't it be amazing if when it's cracked it tells us another version of events dating back thousands of years BC.

Stay tuned.

Yes.

Hopefully we'll finally find out the true nature of vimanas ...

I thought it was interesting. I wish him luck. No telling what will be revealed if and when he or someone else is successful

Fantastic

thank you for sharing that

Originally posted by Warpthal
It's amazing how we can get computer to think like humans. Quite ironic though.

Actually, we can't.

Humans make complex judgements based on a complex set of information "schemas" ("filters") and make leaps of logic that you can NOT program into a computer. It can be used as an assistant but simply can't replace any human.

That said, it's an interesting approach to trying to crack the code. I'm a bit skeptical that the thing is text though I agree it's meaningful symbols. If it's meaningful symbols, then it would be mostly uncrackable (like a set of ... oh... say football mascots and team logos. If you found that, it's not enough evidence to work out the English language or much of anything else.)

I believe the problem is that the language that the Indus script is for is not known.


If the language was a predeccesor of Sanskirt they have a chance but there are not enough examples of the writing.

If he does crack it? How would we know if it was right?

I don't think it's a question of being right or wrong

I think it's more who can make the best guess as to what this is based on some sort of pattern

Originally posted by Hanslune
I believe the problem is that the language that the Indus script is for is not known.

If the language was a predeccesor of Sanskirt they have a chance but there are not enough examples of the writing.

If he does crack it? How would we know if it was right?

My feeling has always been that it's a sort of "proto-writing" and that the symbols are significant to the culture and would say something to the people but it's not actual words and sentences being written out. I wish we had more of the material, because what I've seen is very intriguing.

This thread reminds me of this one

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Bueno de Mesquita uses a computer model to predict future events or trends.

Wow I missed this piece, my bad.

I really hope they can crack the code, but I highly doubt it.

However, if in the rare off-chance that they do figure out something, than perhaps we can finally decrypt the Eastern Island script RongoRongo.

I have many doubts and won't get my hopes up, but maybe we can luck out this time?

There is a treasure trove of information to be gleaned from this, if efforts prove to be fruitful.