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It is a riddle that has confounded scholars for over a century. And now it carries a handsome cash prize: $1 million for anyone who can decipher the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Relatively little is known about the creators of the script, who built a sprawling urban system about 5,000 years ago across what is modern-day India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Excavations at more than 2,000 sites have unearthed a wealth of artifacts. But until the civilization’s script can be read, its language, culture and religion, as well as the history of its rise and fall, will remain...

The Indus Valley Script usually features an animal accompanied by a short series of signs. Image credit: Ismoon, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons Awriting system developed by one of the world’s earliest urban societies has given linguists nothing but grief since it was first discovered on an unintelligible stone seal in the ancient city of Harappa, in what is now Pakistan, 150 years ago. Hoping to finally crack the code, authorities have now announced a $1 million prize to anyone who manages to decipher the so-called Indus Valley Script (IVS). Also known as the Harappan Script, the IVS was invented...

The Kanaga Sign is very common in Indus Rock Art

THE KANAGA SIGN IS VERY COMMON IN INDUS ROCK ART

Every week, Rajesh PN Rao, a computer scientist, gets emails from people claiming they've cracked an ancient script that has stumped scholars for generations. These self-proclaimed codebreakers - ranging from engineers and IT workers to retirees and tax officers - are mostly from India or of Indian origin living abroad. All of them are convinced they've deciphered the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation, a blend of signs and symbols. "They claim they've solved it and that the 'case is closed'," says Mr Rao, Hwang Endowed Professor at the University of Washington and author of peer-reviewed studies on the Indus...

A study on earthen pots from more than 4,000 years ago sheds new light on dietary habits and cooking techniques during the Harappan era. It was conducted by a team of researchers... They examined residues discovered in black and red pottery from Surkotada, a Harappan site in Gujarat's Kutch district that was occupied for approximately 400 years...The analysis of lipid residues (fatty compounds) indicated that during the early stages of the settlement, the inhabitants most probably employed both boiling and frying techniques to prepare their food... the team discovered skeletal remains outside the fortified region of the Harappan-era settlement. The...

The civilization of Indus River Valley is considered one of the three earliest civilizations in world history, along with Mesopotamia and Egypt. Bigger geographically than those two as it unfolded starting in 3300 BCE across what is now Pakistan and India, the Indus civilization boasted uniform weights and measures, skilled artisans, a multifaceted system of trade and commerce, and upwards of 500 symbols and signs for communicating.But one question has vexed scholars for decades and hindered attempts to learn more about this civilization: Were those characters a language or more akin to pictograms? Even as some experts begin to translate...

Scientists have unveiled a sprawling burial site in India belonging to one of the world's earliest urban civilisations. The BBC's Soutik Biswas delves into the clues the graves might give us about how the early Indians lived and died.In 2019, as scientists embarked on excavating a mound of sandy soil near a remote village in the sparsely populated Kutch region, situated not far from Pakistan in India's western state of Gujarat, they had no inkling of the surprise that lay in store for them. "When we began digging, we thought it was an ancient settlement. Within a week, we realised...

A little over a century ago, British and Indian archeologists began excavating the remains of what they soon realized was a previously unknown civilization in the Indus Valley. Straddling parts of Pakistan and India and reaching into Afghanistan, the culture these explorers unearthed had existed at the same time as those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and covered a much larger area. It was also astonishingly advanced: sophisticated and complex, boasting large, carefully laid out cities, a relatively affluent population, writing, plumbing and baths, wide trade connections, and even standardized weights and measures. What kind of a society was the...

Meluhha: the Indus Civilization and Its Contacts with MesopotamiaMark Kenoyer, University of Wisconsin, MadisonThe Oriental Institute | 211,313 views | October 7, 2010

For almost as long as we've had civilization, we've lost it. There are records going back hundreds of years of explorers discovering huge temples encrusted with jungle, or giant pits full of treasure that were once grand palaces. Why did people abandon these once-thriving cities, agricultural centers, and trade routes? Often, the answer is unknown. Here are ten great civilizations whose demise remains a mystery. 1. The Maya The Maya are perhaps the classic example of a civilization that was completely lost, its great monuments, cities and roads swallowed up by the central American jungles, and its peoples scattered to...

Previously, the Iron Age burial site of Adichanallur in southern Tamil Nadu had revealed an impressive collection of iron implements, currently housed in Chennai’s Egmore Museum, dated between 1000 BCE and 600 BCE.Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, while addressing the Tamil Nadu Assembly Monday, said: “It has been found that the date of the iron artefacts ranges from 2172 BCE to 1615 BCE. The results have reiterated the fact that the Iron Age of Tamil Nadu dates back 4,200 years, which is the oldest in India.”This finding has answered questions relating to the start of agricultural activity in Tamil Nadu, he...

The south east coast of Tamil Nadu was inhabited in pre-historic times mainly by Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Negroids and Australoids rather than people similar to contemporary Tamils, a dental anthropological study has found. A team of anthropologists came to the finding after studying more than 1,000 teeth from Adichanallur's pre-historic harbour site on the south-east coast of Tamil Nadu that dates back to 2,500 BC... Optical microscope techniques were employed to study the teeth, which have shown the various growth stages, ageing and wearing processes, racial and ethnic and geographical affinities, dietary patterns, jaw mechanism, constitutional abnormalities of the jaws, pathological...

How to reconstruct the cookery of people who lived thousands of years ago? Bones and plant remains can tell us what kind of ingredients were available. But to reconstruct how ingredients were combined and cooked, scientists need to study ancient cooking vessels.“Fatty molecules and microscopic remains from plants such as starch grains and phytoliths – silica structures deposited in many plant tissues – get embedded into vessels and can survive over long periods,” said Dr Akshyeta Suryanarayan, a reseacher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and co-author on a new study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.In the...

As long as I have been alive, the The Mesopotamian Civilization has been considered the oldest civilization. I'm curious what is the criteria to be considered a civilization? Is it really the oldest, or is something that archeologists do not wish to update their books after spending a lifetime devoted to this teaching. The Mesopotamian civilization dated back to 6500 BC, but the Jiahu in China dated back to 7000 BC. Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey, was a temple was built along a grand geometric plan in 9000 BC. I'm curious to hear an opinion from any archeology\ anthropology experts here.

Archaeologists working in the village of Konthagai in southern India have found a rusted iron dagger preserved in a burial urn alongside skeletal remains, the Times of India reports. The discovery is part of a major excavation effort in the state of Tamil Nadu that seeks to shine a light on the ancient Keeladi civilization.Though the dagger's 16-inch steel blade was rusted and broken in half, part of its wooden handle remained intact. R. Sivanandam, director of the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology, tells the Hindu that this type of weapon was used by warriors during the Sangam period...The wood's...

German researchers have discovered the oldest known case of osteopetrosis or "stone bone" disease in the remains of a man from the Neolithic lacustrine settlement of Maliq in southeast Albania. Osteopetrosis is a rare disorder which manifests through the hardening and solidifying of bones, making them more susceptible to fracture. The study was conducted by palaeopathologist Julia Gresky of the German Archaeological Institute and colleagues. The researchers describe the area as having an important role in the Neolithisation of the Balkan region as it was home to some of the first agricultural economies in the area. The bones they found...

Music, songs and dance have been part of Indian culture. But was there music during the Indus Valley Civilisation? "Yes.... very much...music was there more than 5,000 years ago," says musicologist and computer technology expert Shail Vyas. With the help of the 'Songs of Mystery' project, he has managed to recreate instruments and music of those times. "More work is being done," he said, adding that 20 possible instruments from the Indus Valley Civilisation have been created as Phase-1 of the project, that includes a multi-disciplinary approach involving archaeology, archaeo-musicology, organology, anthropology and advanced mordern technologies. Vyas, a Homi Bhabha...

Over 2 billion people are facing a water crisis, and water-related hygiene and sanitation problems. Clean water is the base for economic development of any society. Water treatment produces clean water. Water treatment includes sedimentation, filtration, aeration, solar treatment, chlorination, and sterilization by boiling. A wide range of treatment processes have evolved to suit the different local conditions. Water treatment must produce ‘clean water’, which is having all contaminants safely below the maximum permissible limits (MPL). With oft revised MPL, new materials are explored to address the presence of contaminants such as microbes, heavy metal ions, oils, pesticides, disinfection byproduct...

Victor Hugo on Gutenberg's Press, "The Invention of Printing ... is the Mother of Revolution." HISTORY OF WRITING The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC. Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007): "No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"): "It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who...