Name: A Rosetta Stone for a lost language
Uploaded: 2011-06-28T00:00:00Z
Duration: 16 min 44 s
Description: Rajesh Rao is fascinated by "the mother of all crossword puzzles": how to decipher the 4000-year-old Indus script. He's enlisting modern computation to try to read this lost language, the key to understanding this ancient civilization.

Rajesh Rao is fascinated by "the mother of all crossword puzzles": how to decipher the 4000-year-old Indus script. He's enlisting modern computation to try to read this lost language, the key to understanding this ancient civilization.

A Rosetta Stone for a lost language

The Indus Valley civilization, larger than its Egyptian and Mesopotamian peers, left behind mysterious artifacts covered in undeciphered script. Modern computation reveals these symbols mirror the structure of language, suggesting the script once carried meaning, trade records, or even personal names. Competing theories about the language’s origins have fueled passionate debate, but no Rosetta Stone has been found. Cracking this ancient code could finally let a lost civilization speak to the present.