[HN Gopher] Enigmatic Ancient 'Unknown Kushan Script' 60% Deciph...
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Enigmatic Ancient 'Unknown Kushan Script' 60% Deciphered by
Scientists
Author : janandonly
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-07-14 19:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ancientpages.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ancientpages.com)
| pharmakom wrote:
| Can someone explain in simple terms how decoding works?
|
| How do you know you have the actual decoding and not some valid
| but incorrect one?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > How do you know you have the actual decoding and not some
| valid but incorrect one?
|
| Well, if you're able to decode at high quality, that's not
| really a concern. There's no such thing as a "valid but
| incorrect" decoding for the same reason that when you're
| decrypting an encrypted message, and you get a stretch of valid
| language, you don't worry about whether that's really the
| message that was originally encrypted or just a weird
| coincidence.
|
| However, ancient languages are usually not understood that
| well, which makes it impossible to determine whether a decoding
| really is or isn't valid. The protocol is supposed to be that
| several different teams are issued the same text, and if they
| produce translations that say the same thing, the decipherment
| is considered valid. This goal has not necessarily actually
| been achieved in some languages that are nevertheless
| considered "deciphered".
|
| Here they say that the unknown language is recognized as a
| variety of Middle Iranic, which adds some plausibility since
| other Middle Iranic languages will be well understood and so
| it's possible for outside experts to criticize their work. The
| shortness of the inscription they're working from subtracts
| plausibility; if other texts exist and they can be convincingly
| deciphered, that would be good favorable evidence.
|
| postscript:
|
| > As a preliminary name, the researchers propose the term
| "Eteo-Tocharian" to describe the newly identified Iranian
| language.
|
| This strikes me as very weird, since there is a Tocharian
| language group and Iranic languages don't belong to it.
| dwattttt wrote:
| To be clear, that is a property of some cryptography; without
| knowing the key any decryption is equally likely (i.e.
| there's no one 'valid' decryption result)
| brokenkebaby wrote:
| >This strikes me as very weird, since there is a Tocharian
| language group and Iranic languages don't belong to it.
|
| I guess it's because "Tocharian" as used for IE languages of
| city-states of Tarim considered to be a mistaken name now.
| Eteo-Tocharian means True/Real Tocharian, and doesn't mean it
| belongs to "Tocharian".
| narag wrote:
| _...and you get a stretch of valid language..._
|
| How do you know it's valid?
| krapp wrote:
| ... you can read and comprehend it?
| heredoc wrote:
| this was already reported twice here.
| janandonly wrote:
| Similar to the famous Rosetta Stone, it was the 2022 discovery of
| a short bilingual inscription on a rock face in Tajikistan (along
| with other such discoveries) that helped them decipher it, thanks
| to the royal name "Vema Takhtu" along with the title "king of
| kings" and other epithets appearing in both texts.
|
| The script was in use in Central Asia between 200 BCE and 700 CE.
| It's associated with nomadic peoples like the Yuezhi, as well as
| the ruling dynasty of the Kushans.
|
| What makes this a big deal is that the Kushan Empire of Central
| Asia was incredibly influential. Among other things, it was
| responsible for the spread of Buddhism to East Asia.
|
| Source: https://ancientbeat.substack.com/p/ancient-beat-69-giant-
| gro...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| How fortunate it was a phonetic script! If it had been simply
| ideograms, it might never have been decoded.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There are no known texts written in "simply ideograms". (And
| good reason to believe that no such text has ever existed.)
| Even in the earliest Sumerian and Chinese texts, symbols are
| used for their phonetic values.
|
| That said, the level of "ideogrammaticality" in those texts
| is much higher than you might like.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Also from ancientpages.com:
|
| "Knowledge of Divine Alien Beings and High-Tech in Ancient Egypt
| Described in Sacred Books and Papyrus"
| https://www.ancientpages.com/2021/05/12/knowledge-of-divine-...
|
| "Unusual High-Tech Machine in The Bible Offers Evidence of Lost
| Ancient Advanced Civilization"
| https://www.ancientpages.com/2018/08/18/unusual-high-tech-ma...
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Here's the link to the actual journal article:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-968X.1...
| tudorw wrote:
| fringe publications are that, fringe, I like it, I feel like
| it's okay to have places where uncertainty can have a space,
| even if it invites articles that fall over the line, so, this
| is not a endorsement of aliens or lost ancient civilization,
| just hope that we can preserve some spaces that take a little
| risk now and again, like arXiv :)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm not sure what I'd think if arXiv started charging readers
| to view their papers on perpetual motion machines.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Agreed, I hate to flag archaeo stories but "news" sources like
| this should not be given the boost in search rankings that they
| will get from showing up in places like this.
|
| fwiw the much more interesting, informative open access paper
| is here:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-968X.12269
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(page generated 2023-07-15 23:00 UTC)