Deciphering the scenario of the ancient valley of Indus could make you a million dollars

It is a puzzle that confused the scholars for more than a century. And now it bears a nice cash prize: a million dollars for anyone who can decipher the scenario of the civilization of the ancient Indus valley.

Relatively little is known about the creators of the script, who built a widespread urban system in what is modern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan about 5,000 years ago.

Excavations in more than 2,000 seats have discovered a multitude of artifacts. But until the scenario of civilization, his language, culture and religion can be read, as well as the history of his ascent and fall, he will remain in a mystery.

The award, announced by MK Stalin, Chief Minister of Southern State Tamil Nada, is intended to restore efforts to decipher the script. Moving, however, does not only apply to a historical scholarship. It is the latest front in the cultural war because of the Indian ancient past.

Ascendant Hindu nationalists claim that the Aryan race, which brought to India the Vedic religion of Hinduism, represents the original Indian people. The claim is central in the concept of Hinduat, the ideology of the Hindu superiority promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.

The party of Mr. Stalin and many others have a different position. They say that the Dravidians of the Southern India are the native people of the country and that the Aryans of northern India were the entrors of Europe. (In reality, the difference between the Aryans and Dravidian is not clear in itself.)

Deciphering the script, they believe that partisans could help resolve questions.

In the concept of Hindu nationalists about the past, the Indus script most likely has to do with Sanskrit, the classic language of India and the one in which the Hindu writings were written.

In the heads of Mr. Stalin and others, the scenario is most likely to have Tamil roots. (Tamil, Dravidic, is another classic language of India.) This would in turn strengthen the Dravidian claim that the original residents of India.

It is not due to the lack of attempt that the script has remained uncomfortable. Archaeologists, technological experts and linguists around the world have been trying to unlock the script for years, Mr. Stalin said while announcement A million dollar reward.

Askor Parpola, a Finnish Indologist who studied the Indus scenario since 1964, said deciphering could put this civilization of the Indus Valley in the Empire of History, not prehistory, giving a new perspective on cultural evolution.

But politically motivated effort, he warned, could decide the results in advance and try to find evidence to justify them.

Civilization of the Indus Valley, also called Harappan civilizations, experts see experts as compared to more egypt, mesopotamia and China.

One of the earliest, he flourished on the banks of the Indus and Saraswati river during the Bronze Age. He planned cities, water management and drainage systems, huge enriched walls and excellent ceramics and the art of Terra Cotta.

Ever since the India’s archaeological examination announced the first findings on civilization in 1924, about 5000 inscriptions have been excavated.

They are engraved in stone or metal or pressed to the fired clay. The summary of the inscription, together with the absence of a stone -like text that shows its symbols in translation, are among the reasons why the script is not deciphered, the scholars say.

Mr. Parpola postulates that signs found on clay tablets were pictures that should be read as whole words. They could also read them phonetically, for homophones, he claims.

He believes his research offers proof of the Dravidian roots of the script. Fish inscriptions found in many inscriptions, theorizes, were a pictogram that could also mean a “star” – a Dravian word for fish, “meen”, was a homophone for a star.

Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyaya, a researcher who has been trying to decipher the script for 10 years, differs with Mr. Parpol on the fish hypothesis.

She claims that fish signs are used to indicate the categories of glossy goods such as jewels and polished copper and bronze items. Calling an indus script “mercantile script”, Mrs. Mukhopadhyaya said that examples in which fish signs were in consecutively used names of related goods and that clay tablets were excavated.

The script should be read as symbols, not phonetic, said Mrs. Mukhopadhyyay. “For example, to show ivory, they simply used a Tuska -like sign,” she said.

Mr. Parpola, who works on the sixth volume of “Indus Seal Corps and Inscriptions”, a database of all available material cultures on Indus civilization, said that over the years he has received a lot of mail from the enthusiasts and researchers who claimed the script or found new inscriptions.

Aziz Kyngrani, Academician in Pakistan, divided by social media One such part of the correspondence. Mr. Parpola congratulated Mr. Kyngle on the book he wrote, but regretted that his discovery did not significantly improve the decipherment of the script.

“Please continue to look for,” Mr. Parpola wrote.