Breakthrough in World's Oldest Undeciphered Writing

You can't tiranize hundreds of thousands of people to make them build tremendous empires, almost aethernal constructions, monolithic monuments, technological marvels; even using the repression from the army, the soldiers are brothers, sons and fathers of the rest of the population. Push them too much and they'll kill you !.

Around the world there are evidence and in many cases documents from past eras, leaving testimony of complex hierarchical organizations of, from well paid professionals to mere day by day journers.

If the "professors" would really want to learn reading, they have to stop assuming what is writen beforehand. They are using all their huge knowledge and capacity of logical thinking to forcefully prove their prejudices right.

NEW BREAK THROUGH!

things haven't change much....

And your 4 lucky charms didn't help you out on this one, I guess.

Are you sure it's "moons"and he's not asking for a new "set of wheels" since two of them broke in half?

Don't just off topic me, show your arguments; go ahead, you have plenty of time to google out, copy and paste and compose an appaling response (since I'm busy).

Sorry, I meant to post a reply, but I've been a bit busy lately. Also, I was a bit flabbergasted and didn't know where to start. All your previous posts that I've read have been relevant, well-considered and better than average, so I was a bit surprised to see what appeared to be an irrelevant rant. Anyway:

First Paragraph - Yes you can, tyranny and slavery has been going on since pre-history, and still goes on. But this is irrelevant since the article has absolutely nothing to do with this.

Second Paragraph - True, but what does this have to do with the article? Seems irrelevant to me.

Third paragraph - I can't see any evidence that any professors have prejudices that are guiding the direction of their research. They are not historians with axes to grind, trying to interpret history to suit themselves. They are just academics trying to decipher an ancient written language. So this also seems irrelevant to me.

Correct me if I am wrong, but none of this seems at all relevant to the original article, which surely makes it "Off-Topic"?

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what this article is actually about, and someone asked "Why not wait until actually making the breakthrough before announcing it?" In fact (and the article is quite clear about this), the breakthrough is not in the deciphering of the texts themselves. The breakthrough is in using technology to make a massive leap forward in the methods of studying these tablets, which should lead to a much more rapid deciphering of the language. The following extract is key, as I see it:

"It allows a virtual image to be turned around, as though being held up to the light at every possible angle.

These images will be publicly available online, with the aim of using a kind of academic crowdsourcing.

He says it's misleading to think that codebreaking is about some lonely genius suddenly understanding the meaning of a word. What works more often is patient teamwork and the sharing of theories. Putting the images online should accelerate this process."

When you consider this, along with the fact that one of the biggest impediments to this type of study is that even philologists and other scholars and academics have very limited access to the tablets that are the source material, you can see that what Dr. Dahl has achieved is a real breakthrough. I find it very interesting.

You make some very cogent points here. I for one fell for the headline "we've nearly done it" and posted before I'd finished reading the whole article (tut tut, tisk tisk!). Perhaps we were all sucked in by the angle the article author wanted to portray, rather than the admittedly interesting and probably central point that now more people can look at the artifacts in a non-destructive way - and simultaneously. As you surmise, that's most likely why Dr Dahl went public.

A reminder to all academics to ensure editorial control over articles about them! (as if!)

To be honest, I wouldn't blame anyone for missing the point of this article. The sensationalist nature of much journalism these days makes it more difficult, and I suspect even the journalists lose the plot in their excitement.

Your last comment is a bit optimistic, especially in this case. Can you imagine a journalist handing over control of his writing to a philologist?!

Well, you are right, it was a rant; but not so irrelevant as it would appear at first. I'm not saying that my comments are correct, but let me explain why I posted them here:

First of all, the credibility of a person that says : " I don't understand your writing, but I already found many mistakes" leaves too much to be desired, not to mention how pretentious that sounds. It makes me seriously doubt of whatever he says.

The first and second paragraphs of my post are opposed to the idea that Dr. Dahl exposes in the second paragraph of the article: "enslaved workers".

About the third paragraph of my post, if he wasn't biased or expected some preconceived interpretation of the writings, he should stick to what is writen, and not try to explain a society from which too little is known. He didn't offer the source of his concepts, he didn't reffer to any translated tablet.

Well, I have to admit that at least he conceded that people a status slightly above that of brutal animals: "...clearly the work of an intelligent mind".

He denies the existence of scholarship, but recognizes 1,200 different symbols, and they are not all of them !; I wander how the scribes were able to use them without having studied them first (and for a long while).

These are just my thoughts about the attitude of Dr. Dahl, not the goals of his research, or how interesting it must be for all to cast light onto such fascinating matter.

First of all, the credibility of a person ……….

I'm sorry, but this is quite ridiculous. He never said " I don't understand your writing", he said "much remains unknown". If he didn't understand it, how could he have put forward the very ideas against which you are ranting? And why is it so surprising that they should find mistakes. Look at the circumstances and see if you can understand. The scribes who first wrote in English (both Old English and Middle English) were scholars with a wide experience of different cultures, literatures and languages. In most cases they could speak and write in Latin, Greek, French and English (or Anglo-Saxon), yet irregularities (mistakes) were not unknown. Given the nature of these tablets, and the scribes who wrote them, and the time and location, tell me why you doubt what the expert says.

The first and second paragraphs of my post ……………..

It is well and good to be opposed to slavery and tyranny. People have been opposed to this for as long as it has existed. But you cannot argue with the fact that it has always existed, and that the wealth of many people, nations and empires is based upon it, and that it still goes on. But ranting about it on an engineering forum is not enlightening, and will not change things.

About the third paragraph of my post…………………

I'm sorry, but this really displays your lack of knowledge and understanding on this topic. You seem to think that the tablets give a written narrative of how things were at the time, and that Dr. Dahl is incorrectly translating or mis-interpreting these. Consider just three things:

· -You seem to think that it is simply a matter of translating a narrative text from one language to another. This is not the case. The markings on the tablets are not a written representation of the language that was spoken in that time and place, they are just symbols that represent things (Cuneiform, like Hieroglyphics, but more so). It is not as if you can read it and hear it as if someone were narrating this to you. These are symbols that represent things that were meaningful to scribes and others at the time, and our academics are trying to work out what that meaning is, and how it relates to civilisation in that particular time and place. In short, it is a matter of deciphering symbols, not translating texts, and then trying to understand what it all means.

· - In most cases the tablets are not stories, poems, narratives or whatever. They are lists and records. They are the equivalent of modern day Goods-In/Delivery Notes, or stock lists. They list who has delivered how much of what, who stocks how much of what, who has consumed how much of what. If Dr. Dahl should "stick to what is writen"(sic) you would find it intensely dull, it would be quite meaningless to you, and you would learn nothing of society at the time and place these tablets were made.

· -The article was written by a journalist, not by Dr. Dahl. You really should consider this very carefully when making comments about a person. If you are commenting on the article, you are commenting on the journalist who wrote it, and you cannot criticise his subjects if they have no control. You seem disgusted that Dr. Dahl did not "offer the source of his concepts, he didn't reffer to any translated tablet."(sic). That is not his fault, it is down to the journalist. If you want to know more on this matter, then perhaps you should take the time to check out their website at Oxford University: http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/proto-elamite

If you are commenting on a topic such as this, you really should have at least a basic understanding of the issues involved. You should not just snatch words from the article and use or twist them for your own means. I would suggest you have a good look at their website: http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/proto-elamite . It revealed to me that I am so far from their level of knowledge and understanding on this topic that I would not dare to question or criticise them unless I were very sure of where I stood (this is from someone who is not a huge fan of so-called experts). I hope it would do the same for you. If not, then let's hear your 'interpretation' of the tablets, and how these academics could be doing it better.

But why has this writing proved so difficult to interpret?

Dr Dahl suspects he might have part of the answer. He's discovered that the original texts seem to contain many mistakes

Back in the days before computers, spell checkers consisted of proof-reading, careful peer review and really big whips. Even back then (as people do today) some didn't bother to use the readily-available spellchecking tools.

Perhaps this is the greatest leason we can learn from these writings, that knowledge is lasting but spelling mistakes are forever.

Let me see. The numbering system seems to resemble a neighboring land but the objects counted seem to not match with the neighboring land symbols. There also seems to be a lack of scholarly tradition in the area.

Well I suspect that this is actually the "real" ledger books written in a local code to baffle the neighboring tax collectors if they got their hands on them. The "errors" are actually changes in the code meant to convey a separate cryptic meaning just for the locals.

I have often thought that if I ever manged to travel back in time to ancient times I would carve a bunch of nonsense into stone and let people try and figure out what I was saying.

This looks suspiciously like something I would create just to be a timeless jerk through the ages!

That is currently being done, we call perpetrators "poets".

"last great remaining cache of un-deciphered texts"

As far as i know there are still more ancient languages that are Undeciphered.

Yep, Mayan and Zapotec (even older than Mayan) are just two examples.

Why not wait until actually making the breakthrough before announcing it?

The kid say what he's doing, the old man, what he's done, and the stupid, what he is going to do.

What does "could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics" mean?

Have they or haven't they? Will it be tomorrow, next week, next year...? All small timescales compared to the age ofd the writing.

And with sufficient support, Dr Dahl says that within two years this last great lost writing could be fully understood

Ah

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There decoding it, as an analogy,

they just need that one last piece of the puzzle............that......seems ........ to ....... be ..........missing.

Or another analogy......... the oxford students are playing solitary with a deck of 51 cards. But, they don't know it.

Why they should make the intellectual leap to embrace writing and then at the same time re-invent it in a different local form remains a puzzle.

Duh!!! You might as well ask why neighbouring countries have different languages! Whilst it might be divine intervention in a Babel Tower incident, it's more likely to be to assert one's own identity and keep secrets.

Has anyone considered that we've found in the middens a load of school children's test pieces/homework? We are discovering that our "primative" ancestors were far more sophisticated that we previously gave them credit...it looks like we're waiting for sections of academia to catch on to that. At least they haven't immediately ascribed (pun intended) religious meaning to it. Not everything "the ancients" did revolved around religion.

These neat little symbols and drawings are clearly the work of an intelligent mind

For Pete's sake! How patronising can they get???!

I hope someday an archeologist finds the little notebook I used during boring physics lessons when I used to make up alphabets. If they find the letters I wrote in runes, or the stories in one of my alternative alphabets, it'd drive 'em crazy trying to find other examples!!

Why the suppositions based on the number of mistakes seen? Do we think English is a dying language? No. Yet I have educated collegues who can't write more than two words at a time without making a mistake, and not noticing/knowing, or caring when they're pointed out. My typing can be shoddy (thanks Lyn ) and I don't always spot the mistakes before hitting submit (often because I don't reread). Finding writings with mistakes in prove only one thing: the authors were human and the items weren't worth proof reading. If the writing type died out, it's more likely to be due to some external event such as invasion or natural disaster. IMHO.

That will probably happen to ourselves, we are stuck in a remote past of hundreds of thousands of years respect to future archaeologists.

Matter decays, and they will find very little or no evidence that we could do math, that our sight once covered the roundness of the earth, above the sky and below the sea waters; that we could fly, speak to the absent, create machines that worked for us Etc.

We better turn to gold, jewels and stone to leave our writings. Multi-language would help a lot, like the Rosseta stone.

So there's no truth in the rumour that it is an ancient utility bill, then? Oh, good.

The best thing I've read today! I don't usaually give GA's for wit, but this one's earned!

"and they will find very little or no evidence that we could do math,"

Looking at all the threads I have responded to I am still thinking there is very little evidence that we as a society can do math as is.

How many do we have here that are still trying to do math with the alphabet and skip the numerical system all together.