Oldest Script Found in the Indus Valley

A new discovery made by archaeologists in Pakistan may help prove that Mesopotamia was not the first civilization to develop a system of writing, and that the invention of script itself is far older than previously thought. Graham Hancock, a journalist and amateur archaeologist who has been the target of criticism from mainstream academics for his controversial theories, firmly believes that civilization as we know it is merely a vestige of a once glorious age on which many of our Atlantean myths are based. To a limited degree, this find may help support his contention.
The site, known as Harappa, the location of the ancient Indus valley civilization which also bears its name, was settled in 3500 B.C., and over the succeeding millennia grew in a vast urban sprawl that became one of the chief civilizations of ancient times. The new find itself, however, changes all the rules. The artifact uncovered was an ancient piece of pottery dating back almost eight thousand years to around 5500 B.P.
The pottery had etched into its surface various “plant-like” and “trident-shaped” symbols. According to BBC Online News, “Experts believe these may have indicated the contents of the jar or signs associated with a deity.”
Most recently, it was Egypt that was credited as the birthplace of writing. A collection of small, clay tablets engraved with an archaic form of hieroglyphics was found in 1998 in the tomb of the Scorpion King, one of the rulers of Egypt prior to the foundation of the glorious Old Kingdom. Carbon-14 dating revealed that the tablets had been inscribed around 3300-3200 B.C., a few centuries earlier than the supposed invention of cuneiform writing around 3100 B.C. by the Sumerians.
Archaeologists now believe that this system of writing did not develop as a natural outgrowth of a spoken language. They contend that it was invented at the order of a ruler who needed to find the best way to make records and levy taxes. A uniform system of writing would be the perfect agent for not only civic leaders, but priests wishing to put down in writing their various incantations, descriptions of holy rites and the stories which their faiths were based upon. It is very probable that pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Aztec and Maya also were based on such practical necessity.
The key to understanding the Indus Valley script is an extrapolative comparison to known Egyptian hieroglyphics. But unlike the Scorpion inscriptions, as the author of a recent BBC article on the subjects states, there was nothing that could be used to compare with the Harappan script, no common Rosetta stone from which to unlock its mysteries.
“It’s a big question as to if we can call what we have found true writing,” Dr. Richard Meadow told BBC News Online, “but we have found symbols that have similarities of what became Indus script.” Meadow told BBC that his excavators will continue to search for more examples of this unique writing system in order to determine if it is indeed a genuine form of writing, and, if so, how it developed from its primitive form to the more advanced writing we see today. The Harappan Civilization left no linguistic descendents; their language is essentially dead, which makes the task of deciphering it next to impossible. The Rosetta Stone was important because it contained two other known languages: ancient Greek and Demotic. Champollion, the eighteenth century linguist who cracked the code of the hieroglyphs, used these two languages to cross-reference it, after which the ancient writing could be read at last. No such relic for the Harappan Civilization exists today, at least to our present knowledge.
Dr. David Whitehouse made the following observation in an article in BBC News:
“What we know of the Harappan civilizers makes them unique. Their society did not like great differences between social classes or the display of wealth by rulers. They did not leave behind large monuments or rich graves. They appear to have been a peaceful people who displayed their art in smaller works of stone. Their society seems to have petered out. Around 1900 B.C., Harappa and other urban centers started to decline as people left them to move east to what is now India and the Ganges.”
Whitehouse closes his article by stating that perhaps writing arose independently in three places at once between 3500 B.C. and 3100 B.C. Doubtless, there is much more to this story than mainstream scientists or archaeologists are prepared to admit. The clock is constantly turning back the antiquity of civilization, as new evidence is uncovered. This teaches us that the truth is subjective to the discoveries of the hour, leading to a veritable transformation of our understanding of modern archaeology. In time, more relics will be unearthed and perhaps the visions of Graham Hancock and others will be forever validated. n