CultureSouth Asia

The Indus script

2,601 BCE – 1,901 BCE

Four thousand inscriptions, and no one who can read them

In depth

Decipherment founders on three things: no long text, no Rosetta stone, and an unknown underlying language. Statistical analysis suggests the sign sequences have linguistic structure, but a rival view holds they are political or religious symbols without phonetic value. The question is politically charged in South Asia, because the answer touches on who was "first".

For children

The Indus cities left thousands of small seals bearing signs and animals. No one has managed to read them. Most inscriptions are only five signs long, and we have no bilingual text to compare against — so we do not even know for certain that it is writing.

Connects to

The Indus Valley civilisation2,601 BCE
Writing is invented3,201 BCE
The Indus cities are abandoned1,901 BCE

Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org