The offer is out there, but it won't be easy. The Indus Valley civilization thrived some 5,300 years ago in what is now northwest India and eastern Pakistan in one of the world's earliest urban settings. After a thousand years or so, the people dispersed and the culture disappeared, along with a written language no one can decipher today, although archaeologists, linguists, and other scholars have tried for around a hundred years. Deciphering the language is difficult, because the remaining examples are short, found on ceramic tiles and seals. No one knows whether the markings represent an alphabet or full words. Or even possibly numbers.
The government of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has made an official offer of a million dollars to any individual or organization who can crack the code and decipher the written language of the Indus Valley civilization. To claim the money, the translation must satisfy the archaeologists who have been working on the project for years. Some people who have already made claims made too many assumptions about the script, which is thought to have more to do with trade and finance than religion or culture. Read about the undeciphered script at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Ismoon)
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