<story><title>Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained</title><url>http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civilization-collapse-explained-123449804.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>The interesting submitted article refers to &quot;and as-yet undeciphered writing,&quot; but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the world had elaborate empires and cities with extensive trade routes but without writing.)&lt;p&gt;Some of the controversy about this issue arises because of the extreme sensitivity of cultural heritage claims in south Asia in a region that spans a heavily militarized border. A good popular book about the nature and origin of writing systems in general, worldwide, is Visible Speech by John DeFrancis,&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions-Comparisons/dp/0824812077&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions-Co...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;and the definitive compilation of international research on writing systems to the date of publication is The World&apos;s Writing Systems&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-Daniels/dp/0195079930/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-Daniels/d...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright and published in 1996. I haven&apos;t concluded absolutely that the Indus Valley Script could not be a writing system, but there is no sure evidence that it is, and the earliest attested writing system in a nearby region is the Brahmi script&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C4%81hm%C4%AB_script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C4%81hm%C4%AB_script&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;that is much more recent in time (a few centuries older than the common era, that is approximately 2,300 years old) and unquestionably based on the scripts of the ancient Near East.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rd108</author><text>Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. &quot;a kind of ornamentation&quot;? Your comment smacks of condescension but I&apos;m sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5931/1165&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5931/1165&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;You also mentioned the Brahmi script is &quot;unquestionably based on the scripts of the ancient Near East&quot;. That is also news to me. Could you provide citations, please?&lt;p&gt;The real controversial implication, IMHO, of studying ancient Indian languages is that Sanskrit (used over thousands of years and refined by rigid grammar rules by e.g. Panini 500 B.C.) may actually be the language from which Latin, and hence many European Romantic languages, developed.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mutiny.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/sanskrit-mother-of-european-languages-says-prof-dean-brown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mutiny.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/sanskrit-mother-of-eu...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s probably worth diving into, if you are genuinely curious. As the Welsh linguist Sir William Jones said,&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.&quot;&lt;p&gt;[edit- link added and fluff redacted. :)]</text></comment>
<story><title>Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained</title><url>http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civilization-collapse-explained-123449804.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>The interesting submitted article refers to &quot;and as-yet undeciphered writing,&quot; but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the world had elaborate empires and cities with extensive trade routes but without writing.)&lt;p&gt;Some of the controversy about this issue arises because of the extreme sensitivity of cultural heritage claims in south Asia in a region that spans a heavily militarized border. A good popular book about the nature and origin of writing systems in general, worldwide, is Visible Speech by John DeFrancis,&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions-Comparisons/dp/0824812077&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Diverse-Interactions-Co...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;and the definitive compilation of international research on writing systems to the date of publication is The World&apos;s Writing Systems&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-Daniels/dp/0195079930/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-Daniels/d...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright and published in 1996. I haven&apos;t concluded absolutely that the Indus Valley Script could not be a writing system, but there is no sure evidence that it is, and the earliest attested writing system in a nearby region is the Brahmi script&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C4%81hm%C4%AB_script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C4%81hm%C4%AB_script&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;that is much more recent in time (a few centuries older than the common era, that is approximately 2,300 years old) and unquestionably based on the scripts of the ancient Near East.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sunwooz</author><text>Wasn&apos;t there a mathematical study that concluded that the Indus script has the structure of a language?  I found an article on it &lt;a href=&quot;http://grimoires.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/grim-writing-the-indus-script-and-computer-science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://grimoires.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/grim-writing-the-i...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>