You Can Win $1 Million Dollars If You Can Decipher This 5,300-Year-Old Indus Valley Script
Along the Indus River in what is now known as northwest India and Pakistan, a civilization emerged more than 5,300 years ago. Its residents were mostly farmers and traders who lived in structures made of baked brick.
Around 2500 B.C.E., the residents moved away from big cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro to smaller, scattered villages.
Eventually, the Indus Valley civilization disappeared. The reason behind its collapse remains a mystery, but researchers suggest that climate change may have led to a reduced water supply, forcing people to migrate.
Traces of their existence were left behind via artifacts and archaeological sites, many of which feature a script that no one has been able to read.
The script contains pictorial symbols found on thousands of pottery, copper plates, bronze items, and stamp seals. Researchers have been trying unsuccessfully to decode the script for more than a century.
Now, the government of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, is offering a cash prize of $1 million to anyone who can interpret the Indus Valley script.
“We have not been able to clearly understand the writing system of the once flourishing Indus Valley,” said M.K. Stalin, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
“The riddle hasn’t been answered for the past 100 years despite several efforts by archaeologists and experts. I announce a cash prize of $1 million to individuals or organizations that decipher the script to the satisfaction of archaeological experts.”
Stalin’s announcement took place at the centennial, marking the archaeologist John Marshall’s discovery of the Indus Valley civilization.
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During the 1920s, Marshall conducted excavations that uncovered the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, as well as artifacts that contained the Indus script.
The script has been seen on about 4,000 relics that were collected by the 1990s. There are more than 400 distinct signs meant to be read from right to left. The writing tends to occur in short inscriptions, averaging a length of five symbols.
Since the Indus or Harappan spoken language has not been identified, that makes it even more difficult to figure out what the written script is supposed to express or represent.
Furthermore, no bilingual document like the Rosetta Stone has turned up as it did for the deciphering of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
However, that hasn’t stopped amateurs from trying to tackle the challenge. A computer scientist at the University of Washington named Rajesh P.N. Rao receives emails every week from people who claim to have solved the mystery of the Indus script.
Technological advancements have helped scholars like Rao make some progress in identifying patterns among the symbols.
For example, a team led by Nisha Yadav, a professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, has determined that 67 signs account for roughly 80 percent of the writing.
The most frequently used symbol appears to be a jar with two handles. The typical layout of the script includes signs engraved across the top of a seal with an animal figure underneath.
“We still don’t know whether the signs are complete words, or part of words or part of sentences,” Yadav said. “Our understanding is that the script is structured, and there is an underlying logic in the writing.”
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