We have CRACKED Indus Valley Script.... Somewhat

We have cracked the Indus Valley script. Somewhat. Yes, somewhat is the important keyword here. And I'm going to be honest here. We have cracked some aspect of this language which is important but it doesn't really help us to read all these Indus Valley script seals in their full capacity yet. But we are going to work towards that. And in this video, we are going to show you how even you, yes my dearest viewers, you can join hands in deciphering the Indus script. To start, here are the meanings of the sounds of the symbols we are going to show in this video. The dotted line here sounds like n or na. The double bar sign here sounds like zu or su depending on how you use it. The lambda sign here sounds like t. The delta looking like a mountain sounds like g. And this nice looking symbol which is a fish symbol sounds like m or ma. And here are few more signs for which we maybe know what it sounds like but we are not sure because of the limitations. And first, the limitations about why we haven't been able to read the Indus script yet. We have been able to read the Egyptian hieroglyphs with the help of Rosetta stone. We have been able to read cuneiform due to the neighborhood inscription and many such cases. But for the Indus script, there is no Rosetta stone. Second limitation is that for good decipherment, we need a huge database of written data. For ancient Egyptians, we had tons of papyri and all these hieroglyphs written on the walls of these temples. For cuneiforms, we had tons and tons of clay tablets that we found in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the average length of signs we have for Indus script is about 5 and even the longest Indus script text we have found so far is 34 characters. And that's it, which is just not enough for a full decipherment even though we are trying our best to decipher it. More on that later. The third limitation is that there is no adjacent language for us to use for validating the results. Rosetta stone had Old Greek, which could be used with Modern Greek and use it to validate the results. It also had a sister language called Coptic, which is still in use. Old Persian cuneiforms could be deciphered with Modern Persian. But for Indus script, the closest relatives we might have are still too far in the timeline. Indus script last disappeared in 18th to 16th century BC and the first inscriptions of Brahmi we have, which is supposed to be its closest relative, it's from 3rd century BC, almost 1300 years apart. Other languages that almost coexisted with Indus script are Proto-Sinaitic and Linear Elamite, a bit not too far from Indus Valley and also somewhat closer in the timeline. And hence, we use these three languages, Brahmi, Linear Elamite and Proto-Sinaitic to start deciphering the Indus script. The assumptions we started with is that the simplest symbol in the language largely try to retain its original sound. It isn't always the case, but we do not want to go into it blind. We will validate it with some other day old language, such as Ancient Tamil, which could be one of the oldest languages on the Indian peninsula. Let's begin. So, first we started with the simplest symbol in the Indus script, the dotted line. And yes, we could find it in the Linear Elamite. In Linear Elamite, it sounds as n or na. No assumptions yet, let's hold on to it for now. Now to see if this works, we move to the bigger combination of Indus seals. Here we can see that the Indus script usually has the dotted line in combination of twos, mostly on either sides of the phrase. Like this sign here. Or this other sign on this another seal. Now if we check the earlier meaning of na or na, the words should sound like na something na. And as we can see, it's a palindrome. A bit detailed now, but in Brahmi, we have this sign, which sounds like ma. Now, if we take the original phrase that we put it on the side and put all the signs together, we get the word na ma na. And it is not an arbitrary word. In Indian languages, in most of them, the word na ma na, which is a modern form of namaste, which also means welcome or a salutation. We don't even have to leave at that. Languages of this age had tendency of each character having a meaning behind it. The ox sign in Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, which translates to alep, which again means ox, has the sound a or a. Or let's take Egyptian. The translation for the mouth in Egyptian is ra, which is also the representation for the sound ar or ra. This takes us to this sign in Brahmi, which has a sound ma associated to it. The origin of this sound is mean, which in English means fish. And the reason is, if we flip it, it is the exact same symbol for the fish in Indus script. Thus, this validates our earlier hypothesis of na means the dotted line. And it also gives the meaning for another sign to us, which is the fish sign, which means ma. Through the same method, we were able to retrieve meanings for all these signs shown here. The double bar sign means zu or su, as we got it from linear elemite. Brahmi helped us to get the meanings for the lambda sign, which is ta. And the mountain sign stands for ga. The square means ba for most of its life, even as in Brahmi. And here we have two more signs for which we are about 50% sure that these are the sounds. We won't go more into details about the decipherment on these characters, as the video will get too long and boring. But if you still want to know about it, reply in the comments below and we'll make a part two of these decipherments. The methodology we used for this decipherment is in this flowchart, which we suggest you all should use for the decipherments. And don't forget to share with us any amazing findings you get in this adventure of yours. Thanks for watching and see you next time.