The language of the pre-Indo-Aryan Indus River Valley civilization is often called Harappan, even though that it not what the speakers of the language called it, after a leading archaeological site from this South Asian culture.
A recent post at Language Log sums up the recent debate over the stylized seals used by that culture.
There is debate over whether this was a mere proto-linguistic script, similar to highway signs or laundry symbols or business logos, or whether they coded a full fledged written language.
One advocate of the proto-language view summed up the point when he "offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could find an Indus inscription containing at least 50 symbols." Advocates of the written language interpretation, in contrast, argue on the basis of computer analysis of information entropy in the patterns of seals that they are much more similar to written languages than to, representative "nonlinguistic scripts (DNA, protein, Beethoven’s Sonata no. 32, and a computer code called Fortran)."
I personally favor the former interpretation for both this and the similar Vinca script of the Balkans.
Those who believe that it is a full fledged written language, moreover, debate what that language was like, with some earlier and less credible scholars arguing for Dravidian or something close to it, and other arguing that it codes a Harappan language not closely related to Dravidian or any other modern language family.
I personally favor the conclusion that the Harappan language was not closely related to any modern language family, although it had substrate influences on modern South Asian languages.
Modern machined learning and artificial intelligence tools haven't decisively tipped the balance in this linguistic debate.
1 comment:
I've long held that both the IV symbols and Vinca symbols were the local version of branding, whether pots or ponies, and that this was common elsewhere but mostly on things which eventually decomposed or were used up. Also the symbols would often wear away depending on the materials. Maybe scripts did originate from them, but they weren't real scripts yet.
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