The Sign of the Unicorn - Woodstock School

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The Sign of the Unicorn
The 5000
year‐old
script of
the Indus
Valley civilization
appears in fragments
no longer
than a haiku, so archaeological
evidence
suggests
that the people
who used it weren’t
writing novels.
But nobody knows
for certain because
this early system of
writing has never
been deciphered.
The meaning of the
ancient symbols of
India is one of the
great puzzles of linguistics.
For over 100 years,
linguists, archaeologists
and even computer
experts have
tried to analyze the
nearly 4000 symbols
that have been
unearthed in places
like Harappa and
Mohenjo‐Daro.
Since no single artifact
contains more
than 17 symbols in
a group, most experts
believe that
the copper, bronze,
stone and ceramic
“writing” may have
been stamp seals
describing property
and ownership,
some kind of ritual
code or emblems of
royal signiicance,
like the Egyptian
cartouche. If correct,
this theory
would put the script
into the category of
“proto‐writing,”
similar to the ancient
cuneiform of
Mesopotamia,
which has proven to
be more worldly
than poetic.
Other analysts point
out that the Indus
characters are more
intricate and beautiful
than other examples
of early
scripts and that the
artifacts display iner
craftsmanship
than would have
been devoted to
routine recordkeeping.
So the
mystery persists.
No bilingual specimen
like the Rosetta
Stone has yet
been found and the
script died out
about 3000 years
ago. While some
linguists maintain
that the Harappan
script is related to
ancient Brahmi
and, accordingly,
to Sanskrit and
Hindi, others believe
that this early
form of writing
has more in common
with the Dravidian
languages
that people
continue
to speak
today in
southern
India.
Spectrographic
analysis
may con‐
irm this
theory.
How does
science support linguistic
analysis To
learn more about
this ancient and
modern mystery,
see Lost Languages,
by Andrew Robinson.
REF 411.09
I know something
you don’t know.

How to Make a Scientist Cry
That’s not
possible!
Father of the hydrogen bomb.