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The Indus Valley civilization was one of the most advanced in the world for over 500 years. More than 1000 settlements sprawled across 250,000 square miles of what is now Pakistan and northwest India from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. It had several large, well-planned cities like Mohenjo-daro, common iconography, and a script no one has been able to understand. Linguists studying the Indus script don't know anything about the underlying language and there's no multilingual Rosetta Stone, but scholars have analyzed its structure for clues and compared it to other scripts. Most Indologists think it's “logo-syllabic” script like Sumerian...

Image: Singapore Heritage/Roots THE LANGUAGE ON THIS 1,000 YEAR OLD STONE IS A “GLYPH BREAKER’S NIGHTMARE.” SCIENTISTS WANT TO USE AI TO CRACK IT. MJ BANIAS·JUNE 14, 2024 For centuries, the Singapore Stone has stood as one of Southeast Asia’s most enigmatic artifacts. Discovered in 1819 at the mouth of the Singapore River, this sandstone slab, inscribed with an unknown script, has baffled historians and linguists alike. Dubbed a “glyph breaker’s nightmare,” researchers are turning to artificial intelligence to unlock the secrets of this ancient relic. The Singapore Stone, originally a large boulder, was partially destroyed by the British in...