Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of a 'breakthrough'
Posted on 10/22/2012 8:03:13 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of a 'breakthrough'
It says...0bummer is toast!
Could be, maybe not. While it's nice to hear about what people are working on it would be nice once in a while to read a story about an actual discovery.
Cretan Linear A?
Woops. no.
So... it's a cash register receipt for foodstamp purchaes?
do they know if its right side up or not and which way its read from left to right, top to bottom?
Maybe its like Korean and symbols are actually syllables, not letters and the sounds tell us nothing about what the words mean.
This has now been Translated
Of course without knowing what the sounds mean, this alphabet is worthless
“...a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level...”
In the Middle East, slaves living at death’s door step is nothing new.
ITS A COOK BOOK!
Pretty slow way to tell me the cows are out.
Hopefully, the message is of much more import..
The Winner!
I think I see M’s and O’s on that tablet... easy to Photoshop for someone who knows how...
Twilight Zone show?
God has a most excellent sense of humor, considering how fallen 98% of Creation is...
Now we see through a glass darkly.
Nope...it says 16 trillion in debt...look at the 0’s.
Toast? Did someone mention toast?
The non-slave average people probably weren’t much better off
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