Breakthrough {sorta} in world's oldest undeciphered writing (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Sean Coughlan

BBC News education correspondent

The world's oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.

This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level.

"I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough," says Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.

Dr Dahl's secret weapon is being able to see this writing more clearly than ever before.
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It's being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200BC and 2900BC in a region now in the south west of modern Iran.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19964786

[libinnyandia]

1. That sounds like a society Republicans could love.

[Ian David]

2. I thought it said, "Hello, Sweetie." n/t

[madrchsod]

3. this will be a huge gap filler in the history of that region

[Warpy]

4. I was hoping this was about Etruscan

It was widely spoken on the northern Italian peninsula but was eventually superseded by Latin. Few written materials survived but inscriptions were left all around the Mediterranean basin.

The last known speaker and reader of Etruscan was the Emperor Claudius (yes, that Claudius), who had learned it from a peasant in the region and proceeded to translate several of their works, now long gone (or stashed somewhere in the Vatican, who knows?).

Like all dying languages, Etruscan borrowed much more from Latin than Latin borrowed from Etruscan, so there is very little to go on.