Jeg vil begynde med et tankeeksperiment. Vi er 4000 år ude i fremtiden. Civilisationen, som vi kender den, findes ikke mere ingen bøger, ingen elektroniske dimser, ingen Facebook og Twitter. Al viden om det engelske sprog og alfabetet, er gået tabt. Forestil jer nu at arkæologerne graver i ruinerne fra vore byer. Hvad finder de? Måske nogle firkantede stykker plastik, med mærkelige symboler på dem. Måske nogle runde stykker metal. Måske nogle cylinderformede beholdere, med symboler på dem. Og måske bliver en arkæolog berømt da hun i bjergene, et sted i Nord Amerika, opdager massive udgaver af de samme symboler. (Latter) Lad os nu spørge os: hvad kunne sådanne fund fortælle om os om 4000 år ?
I'd like to begin with a thought experiment. Imagine that it's 4,000 years into the future. Civilization as we know it has ceased to exist -- no books, no electronic devices, no Facebook or Twitter. All knowledge of the English language and the English alphabet has been lost. Now imagine archeologists digging through the rubble of one of our cities. What might they find? Well perhaps some rectangular pieces of plastic with strange symbols on them. Perhaps some circular pieces of metal. Maybe some cylindrical containers with some symbols on them. And perhaps one archeologist becomes an instant celebrity when she discovers -- buried in the hills somewhere in North America -- massive versions of these same symbols. Now let's ask ourselves, what could such artifacts say about us to people 4,000 years into the future?
Det er ikke noget hypotetisk spørgsmål. Det er præcis det, vi er konfronteret med, når vi prøver at forstå Indusdalens civilisation som fandtes for 4000 år siden. Induscivilisationen var omtrentlig samtidig med de langt mere kendte Ægyptiske og Mesopotamiske civilisationer, men det var langt større end de to. Det bredte sig over omtrentlig 1 million km², og dækkede det nuværende Pakistan, Nordvest Indien og dele af Afghanistan og Iran. Eftersom at det var en kæmpe civilisation kunne man forvente at finde rigtig magtfulde herskere, konger og store monumenter, som glorificerede disse magtfulde konger. Men, arkæologerne fandt intet af dette. De fandt små objekter som disse.
This is no hypothetical question. In fact, this is exactly the kind of question we're faced with when we try to understand the Indus Valley civilization, which existed 4,000 years ago. The Indus civilization was roughly contemporaneous with the much better known Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations, but it was actually much larger than either of these two civilizations. It occupied the area of approximately one million square kilometers, covering what is now Pakistan, Northwestern India and parts of Afghanistan and Iran. Given that it was such a vast civilization, you might expect to find really powerful rulers, kings, and huge monuments glorifying these powerful kings. In fact, what archeologists have found is none of that. They've found small objects such as these.
Her er et eksempel på eet af disse objekter. Dette er selvfølgelig en replika. Men hvem er denne person ? En konge ? En gud ? En præst ? Eller måske et almindeligt menneske som dig og mig ? Vi ved det ikke. Men Indusfolket efterlod også genstande med tekst på. Nej, ikke plastik-kort, men stensegl, kobberstykker krukker og - meget overraskende - en stor tavle med tegn, som blev fundet nær porten til en by. Vi ved ikke om der står Hollywood, eller Bollywood for den sags skyld. Vi ved ikke engang hvad et eneste af disse objekter fortæller, fordi Indusskriften er ikke afkodet. Vi ved ikke hvad disse symboler betyder.
Here's an example of one of these objects. Well obviously this is a replica. But who is this person? A king? A god? A priest? Or perhaps an ordinary person like you or me? We don't know. But the Indus people also left behind artifacts with writing on them. Well no, not pieces of plastic, but stone seals, copper tablets, pottery and, surprisingly, one large sign board, which was found buried near the gate of a city. Now we don't know if it says Hollywood, or even Bollywood for that matter. In fact, we don't even know what any of these objects say, and that's because the Indus script is undeciphered. We don't know what any of these symbols mean.
Symbolerne findes hyppigst på segl. og deroppe ses et sådant objekt. Det er det firkantede med en enhjørning på det. Det er et flot stykke kunst. Hvor stor tror I det er ? Måske så stor ? Eller måske så stor ? Lad mig vise det. Her er et kopi af sådant segl. Det er kun en tomme på hver led -- ret lille. Hvad bruges de til ? Vi ved, at de blev brugt til at præge leretiketter, som blev fastgjort til varer, som blev sendt fra eet sted til et andet. Ligesom de pakke-sedler, der er på FedEx-kasser. De blev brugt til at lave disse pakkesedler. Du spørger måske, hvad der står på dem. Måske står der afsenderens navn eller information om varerne, som blev sendt fra eet sted til et andet. Vi ved det ikke. Vi er nødt til at decifrere teksten, for at besvare det spørgsmål.
The symbols are most commonly found on seals. So you see up there one such object. It's the square object with the unicorn-like animal on it. Now that's a magnificent piece of art. So how big do you think that is? Perhaps that big? Or maybe that big? Well let me show you. Here's a replica of one such seal. It's only about one inch by one inch in size -- pretty tiny. So what were these used for? We know that these were used for stamping clay tags that were attached to bundles of goods that were sent from one place to the other. So you know those packing slips you get on your FedEx boxes? These were used to make those kinds of packing slips. You might wonder what these objects contain in terms of their text. Perhaps they're the name of the sender or some information about the goods that are being sent from one place to the other -- we don't know. We need to decipher the script to answer that question.
Decifreringen af teksten er ikke bare en intellektuelt gåde.. Det er faktisk blevet et spørgsmål, som er blevet stærkt sammenflettet med politik og Sydasiens kulturhistorie. Skriften er faktisk blevet en kampplads, for tre forskellige grupper. Først er der den gruppe som er meget lidenskabelig i deres tro på at Indusskriften ikke repræsentere noget sprog overhovedet. De mener, at symbolerne meget ligner de symboler man ser på trafikskilte og emblemer på skjolde. Der er en anden gruppe, som mener, at Indus-skriften repræsenterer et Indoeuropæisk sprog. Hvis man ser på et kort over Indien i dag, så ser man, at de fleste sprog, som tales i Nordindien, tilhører den Indoeuropæiske sprogfamilie. Så nogle mener altså at Indusskriften repræsenterer en gammelt Indoeuropæisk sprog såsom Sanskrit.
Deciphering the script is not just an intellectual puzzle; it's actually become a question that's become deeply intertwined with the politics and the cultural history of South Asia. In fact, the script has become a battleground of sorts between three different groups of people. First, there's a group of people who are very passionate in their belief that the Indus script does not represent a language at all. These people believe that the symbols are very similar to the kind of symbols you find on traffic signs or the emblems you find on shields. There's a second group of people who believe that the Indus script represents an Indo-European language. If you look at a map of India today, you'll see that most of the languages spoken in North India belong to the Indo-European language family. So some people believe that the Indus script represents an ancient Indo-European language such as Sanskrit.
Den sidste gruppe mener at Indusfolket var forfædrene til befolkningen i nutidens Sydindien. De mener at Indusskriften repræsenterer en gammel form for den Dravidianske sprogfamilie som er den sprogfamilie, som tales i store dele af Syd Indien i dag. Og fortalerne for denne teori peger på den lille lomme af Dravidiantalende folk. nær Afghanistan. De siger at man måske engang talte Dravidianske sprog over hele Indien, og det antyder at Indus-civilisationen måske også er Dravidiansk.
There's a last group of people who believe that the Indus people were the ancestors of people living in South India today. These people believe that the Indus script represents an ancient form of the Dravidian language family, which is the language family spoken in much of South India today. And the proponents of this theory point to that small pocket of Dravidian-speaking people in the North, actually near Afghanistan, and they say that perhaps, sometime in the past, Dravidian languages were spoken all over India and that this suggests that the Indus civilization is perhaps also Dravidian.
Hvilken af disse hypoteser er rigtig ? Vi ved det ikke, men hvis man kunne dechifrere skriften, så ville man måske kunne besvaret spørgsmålet. Men dechifreringen af skriften er en meget udfordrende opgave. For det første er der ikke nogen "Rosetta sten". Jeg tænker ikke på softwaren. Jeg tænker på en historisk genstand, som indeholder samme tekst på både et kendt og et ukendt sprog. Vi har ikke sådan en genstand for Indusskriften. Og vi ved ikke engang hvilket sprog de talte. Og for at gøre sagen endnu værre, så er de fleste tekster ekstremt korte. Som jeg viste jer, så findes de som regel på disse segl, som er meget meget små.
Which of these hypotheses can be true? We don't know, but perhaps if you deciphered the script, you would be able to answer this question. But deciphering the script is a very challenging task. First, there's no Rosetta Stone. I don't mean the software; I mean an ancient artifact that contains in the same text both a known text and an unknown text. We don't have such an artifact for the Indus script. And furthermore, we don't even know what language they spoke. And to make matters even worse, most of the text that we have are extremely short. So as I showed you, they're usually found on these seals that are very, very tiny.
I betragtning af disse formidable forhindringer, kan man spørge om man overhovedet vil blive i stand til at dechifrere Indus-skriften I resten af mit foredrag vil jeg fortælle om, hvordan jeg lærte at overvinde denne frygt og i stedet holde af udfordringen som Indusskriften gav. Jeg har altid været fascineret af Indusskriften siden jeg læste om den i skolebog. Hvorfor var jeg fascineret ? Det er den sidste større ikke-decifrerede skrift i den forhistoriske verden. Min karrieres vej førte mig til at blive computer-neuro-forsker I mit daglige arbejde laver jeg computermodeller af hjernen for at forstå hvordan hjernen forudsiger ting, hvordan hjernen tager beslutninger, hvordan hjernen lærer og så videre.
And so given these formidable obstacles, one might wonder and worry whether one will ever be able to decipher the Indus script. In the rest of my talk, I'd like to tell you about how I learned to stop worrying and love the challenge posed by the Indus script. I've always been fascinated by the Indus script ever since I read about it in a middle school textbook. And why was I fascinated? Well it's the last major undeciphered script in the ancient world. My career path led me to become a computational neuroscientist, so in my day job, I create computer models of the brain to try to understand how the brain makes predictions, how the brain makes decisions, how the brain learns and so on.
Men i 2007, krydsedes min vej igen med Indusskriften. Det var da jeg var i Indien, og jeg havde den dejlige mulighed for at mødes med nogle indiske forskere, som brugte computere til at analysere skriften. Da erkendte jeg at der var en mulighed for at samarbejde med disse forskere, så jeg tog chancen. Jeg vil fortælle nogle af de resultater som vi har fået, eller snarere: lad os alle dechifrere sammen. Er I klar ?
But in 2007, my path crossed again with the Indus script. That's when I was in India, and I had the wonderful opportunity to meet with some Indian scientists who were using computer models to try to analyze the script. And so it was then that I realized there was an opportunity for me to collaborate with these scientists, and so I jumped at that opportunity. And I'd like to describe some of the results that we have found. Or better yet, let's all collectively decipher. Are you ready?
Det første, som man skal gøre, når man har en ikke-decifreret tekst er at finde ud af skriveretningen. Her er to tekster som indeholder nogle symboler på dem. Kan I fortælle mig om retningen er højre-mod-venstre eller venstre-mod-højre ? I får nogle sekunder. OK. Højre-mod-venstre. Hvor mange ? OK. Venstre-mod-højre ? Oh - det er næsten 50/50. OK Svaret er: hvis I ser på den venstre side af de to tekster, ser I at der en sammenklemning af tegnene, og det lader til at for 4000 år siden, da skriveren skrev fra højre mod venstre, at han løb tør for plads. Så de var nødt til at klemme tegnene. Een af tegnene er også under teksten øverst. Det lader formode, at skriveretningen sikkert var fra højre mod venstre, Det er en af de første ting vi ved, at retningen er et væsentligt aspekt ved lingvistiske skrifter. Og Indusskriften har altså denne egenskab.
The first thing that you need to do when you have an undeciphered script is try to figure out the direction of writing. Here are two texts that contain some symbols on them. Can you tell me if the direction of writing is right to left or left to right? I'll give you a couple of seconds. Okay. Right to left, how many? Okay. Okay. Left to right? Oh, it's almost 50/50. Okay. The answer is: if you look at the left-hand side of the two texts, you'll notice that there's a cramping of signs, and it seems like 4,000 years ago, when the scribe was writing from right to left, they ran out of space. And so they had to cram the sign. One of the signs is also below the text on the top. This suggests the direction of writing was probably from right to left, and so that's one of the first things we know, that directionality is a very key aspect of linguistic scripts. And the Indus script now has this particular property.
Hvilke andre sprogegenskaber udviser skriften ? Sprog indeholder mønstre. Hvis jeg giver jer bogstavet Q, og beder jer forudsige hvad det næste bogstav ville være, hvad tror I så, det ville være? De fleste af jer sagde U, hvilket er rigtigt. Men hvis jeg bad jer om at forudsige eet bogstag til, hvad tror I så det ville være ? Der er flere muligheder Det kunne være E. Det kunne være I. Det kunne være A, men bestemt ikke B, C eller D - vel ? Indusskriften udviser også lignende mønstre. En stor mængde tekst begynder med dette ruder-formet symbol. Og det følges hyppigt af dette spørgsmålstegn lignende symbol. Det er helt ligesom Q og U eksemplet. Dette symbol kan så igen følges af disse fiskelignende symboler og nogle andre, men aldrig af disse andre tegn i bunden. Ydermere er der nogle tegn, som "foretrækker" slutningen af en tekst, såsom dette krukkeformede tegn, og dette tegn viser sig at være det mest hyppigt forekommende tegn i skriften.
What other properties of language does the script show? Languages contain patterns. If I give you the letter Q and ask you to predict the next letter, what do you think that would be? Most of you said U, which is right. Now if I asked you to predict one more letter, what do you think that would be? Now there's several thoughts. There's E. It could be I. It could be A, but certainly not B, C or D, right? The Indus script also exhibits similar kinds of patterns. There's a lot of text that start with this diamond-shaped symbol. And this in turn tends to be followed by this quotation marks-like symbol. And this is very similar to a Q and U example. This symbol can in turn be followed by these fish-like symbols and some other signs, but never by these other signs at the bottom. And furthermore, there's some signs that really prefer the end of texts, such as this jar-shaped sign, and this sign, in fact, happens to be the most frequently occurring sign in the script.
Sådanne mønstre bragte os på end ide. Ideen var at bruge en computer til at lære disse mønstre, og derfor gav vi computeren de eksisterende tekster. Og computeren lærte en statistisk model over hvilke symboler der optræder sammen og hvilke symboler som følger efter hinanden. Med denne computermodel, kan vi afprøve modellen ved simpelt at spørge den. Vi kunne fjerne nogle symboler med vilje, og vi kunne bede den om at forudsige de manglende symboler. Her er nogle eksempler. Man kan betragte dette som måske det ældste forhistoriske lykkehjul.
Given such patterns, here was our idea. The idea was to use a computer to learn these patterns, and so we gave the computer the existing texts. And the computer learned a statistical model of which symbols tend to occur together and which symbols tend to follow each other. Given the computer model, we can test the model by essentially quizzing it. So we could deliberately erase some symbols, and we can ask it to predict the missing symbols. Here are some examples. You may regard this as perhaps the most ancient game of Wheel of Fortune.
Vi fandt at computeren var korrekt i 75% af tilfældene ved forudsigelse af det korrekte symbol. I resten af tilfældene, var det næstbedste eller det tredjebedste gæt det rigtige svar. Der er også en praktisk anvendelse af denne fremgangsmåde. Der findes en masse tekster, som er beskadiget. Her er et eksempel. Vi kan bruge computer-modellen til at forsøge at gøre teksten komplet, ved at fremkomme ved det bedste gæt. Her er et eksempel på, et symbol som blev forudsagt. Det kunne være rigtig brugbart når vi forsøger at decifrere teksten ved at frembringe mere data, som vi kan analysere.
What we found was that the computer was successful in 75 percent of the cases in predicting the correct symbol. In the rest of the cases, typically the second best guess or third best guess was the right answer. There's also practical use for this particular procedure. There's a lot of these texts that are damaged. Here's an example of one such text. And we can use the computer model now to try to complete this text and make a best guess prediction. Here's an example of a symbol that was predicted. And this could be really useful as we try to decipher the script by generating more data that we can analyze.
Her er noget andet som man kan gøre med computer-modellen. Forestil jer en abe som sidder på et tastatur. Man vil få en tilfældig smøre af bogstaver, som kunne se sådan ud. Sådan en rodet tekst siges at have en høj entropi. Det er et fysik- og informationsteoretisk udtryk. Men forestil jer bare en rodet bunke bogstaver. Hvor mange af jer har hældt kaffen udover tastaturet? Så har I måske set problemet med den fastsiddende tast. Det samme tegn bare gentaget igen og igen. Den slags sekvenser siges at have en lav entropi fordi der ikke er nogen variation overhovedet. Sprog har, på den anden side, et mellemniveau af entropi. Den er hverken for monoton, eller for tilfældig Og Indusskriften ? Her er en graf som viser entropien for en bunke sekvenser. Øverst ser du den tilfældigt dannede sekvens som er et tilfældigt virvar af bogstaver, og interessant nok, finder vi også menneskets DNA-sekvens og musik. De er begge meget foranderlige, hvorfor man ser dem øverst i feltet. Nederst i feltet ses en fastlåst sekvens. En sekvens af A'er, og man ser et computerprogram som her er i Fortran-sproget, som følger meget stramme regler. Lingvistiske tekster ligger i midterfeltet.
Now here's one other thing you can do with the computer model. So imagine a monkey sitting at a keyboard. I think you might get a random jumble of letters that looks like this. Such a random jumble of letters is said to have a very high entropy. This is a physics and information theory term. But just imagine it's a really random jumble of letters. How many of you have ever spilled coffee on a keyboard? You might have encountered the stuck-key problem -- so basically the same symbol being repeated over and over again. This kind of a sequence is said to have a very low entropy because there's no variation at all. Language, on the other hand, has an intermediate level of entropy; it's neither too rigid, nor is it too random. What about the Indus script? Here's a graph that plots the entropies of a whole bunch of sequences. At the very top you find the uniformly random sequence, which is a random jumble of letters -- and interestingly, we also find the DNA sequence from the human genome and instrumental music. And both of these are very, very flexible, which is why you find them in the very high range. At the lower end of the scale, you find a rigid sequence, a sequence of all A's, and you also find a computer program, in this case in the language Fortran, which obeys really strict rules. Linguistic scripts occupy the middle range.
Hvad med Industeksten ? Vi fandt at Industeksten faktisk ligger i området med lingvistiske tekster. Da dette resultat blev offentliggjort første gang var det yderst kontroversielt. Der var nogle som protesterede voldsomt og det var dem, som mente at Indusskriften ikke repræsenterer noget sprog. Jeg fik endda nogle hademails. Mine studerende sagde, at jeg skulle overveje at få beskyttelse. Hvem ville have troet at decifrering kunne være en farlig profession ? Hvad viser dette resultat i virkeligheden ? Det viser, at Indusskriften har en vigtig egenskab for et sprog. Som man plejer at sige, hvis det ligner et lingvistisk skrift, og opfører sig som et lingvistisk skrift, så har man nok også et lingvistisk skrift. Hvilke andre beviser er der for at skriften faktisk koder for et sprog ?
Now what about the Indus script? We found that the Indus script actually falls within the range of the linguistic scripts. When this result was first published, it was highly controversial. There were people who raised a hue and cry, and these people were the ones who believed that the Indus script does not represent language. I even started to get some hate mail. My students said that I should really seriously consider getting some protection. Who'd have thought that deciphering could be a dangerous profession? What does this result really show? It shows that the Indus script shares an important property of language. So, as the old saying goes, if it looks like a linguistic script and it acts like a linguistic script, then perhaps we may have a linguistic script on our hands. What other evidence is there that the script could actually encode language?
Lingvistiske skrifter kan kode adskillige sprog. For eksempel er der her den samme tekst på engelsk og den samme sætning på hollandsk, og som bruger det samme alfabet. Hvis I ikke kender til hollandsk og I kun kender til engelsk og jeg giver jer nogle ord på hollandsk, så vil I sige at disse ord indeholder nogle meget usædvanlige mønstre. Noget stemmer ikke, og I vil sige, at disse ord nok ikke er engelske ord. Det samme er tilfældet med Indusskriften. Computeren fandt adskillige tekster, to af dem vises her som meget usædvanlige mønstre. For eksempel den første tekst: krukke-tegnet står dobbelt. Dette tegn er det hyppigste i Indusskriften, og det er kun i denne tekst at det optræder dobbelt.
Well linguistic scripts can actually encode multiple languages. So for example, here's the same sentence written in English and the same sentence written in Dutch using the same letters of the alphabet. If you don't know Dutch and you only know English and I give you some words in Dutch, you'll tell me that these words contain some very unusual patterns. Some things are not right, and you'll say these words are probably not English words. The same thing happens in the case of the Indus script. The computer found several texts -- two of them are shown here -- that have very unusual patterns. So for example the first text: there's a doubling of this jar-shaped sign. This sign is the most frequently-occurring sign in the Indus script, and it's only in this text that it occurs as a doubling pair.
Hvorfor var det sådan ? Vi undersøgte, hvor disse tekster kom fra, og det viste sig, at de blev fundet langt, langt væk fra Indusdalen. De blev fundet i det nutidige Irak og Iran. Hvorfor blev de fundet der ? Jeg fik ikke fortalt at Indusfolket var meget handelsmindede. De handlede med folk et langvejs fra, hvor de boede, og i dette tilfælde, rejste de over havet, helt til Mesopotamien, det nutidige Irak. Det lader til at Induskøbmændene brugte denne skrift til at skrive et fremmed sprog. Ligesom eksemplet med engelsk og hollandsk. Det kunne forklare disse mærkelige mønstre, som er meget forskellig fra mønstrene, som fandtes i Indusdalen. Det lader antyde, at Indusskriften kunne bruges til at skrive forskellige sprog. De resultater vi har indtil nu, synes at pege på den konklusion at Indus-skriften sandsynligvis repræsenterer et sprog.
Why is that the case? We went back and looked at where these particular texts were found, and it turns out that they were found very, very far away from the Indus Valley. They were found in present day Iraq and Iran. And why were they found there? What I haven't told you is that the Indus people were very, very enterprising. They used to trade with people pretty far away from where they lived, and so in this case, they were traveling by sea all the way to Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. And what seems to have happened here is that the Indus traders, the merchants, were using this script to write a foreign language. It's just like our English and Dutch example. And that would explain why we have these strange patterns that are very different from the kinds of patterns you see in the text that are found within the Indus Valley. This suggests that the same script, the Indus script, could be used to write different languages. The results we have so far seem to point to the conclusion that the Indus script probably does represent language.
Hvis det ikke repræsenterer et sprog, hvordan skal vi så læse symbolerne ? Det er vor næste store udfordring. Man vil bemærke, at mange symboler ligner tegninger af mennesker, insekter, fisk, fugle. De fleste forhistoriske skrifter bruger rebusprincippet, hvor man bruger billeder til at stå for ord. For eksempel Kan I skrive det ved brug af tegninger ? I får et par sekunder. Ja ? OK. Her er min løsning. Man kan bruge tegningen af en bi efterfulgt af en tegning af et blad, og så står der på engelsk - "belief" Der er sikkert andre løsninger. I tilfældet med Indusskriften, er problemet det omvendte. Man er nødt til at regne lydene ud for hvert af disse tegninger, sådan at det hele sekvensen giver mening. Det er ligesom krydsord, med den undtagelse at dette er alle krydsords moder fordi gevinsten er så stor, hvis man løser den.
If it does represent language, then how do we read the symbols? That's our next big challenge. So you'll notice that many of the symbols look like pictures of humans, of insects, of fishes, of birds. Most ancient scripts use the rebus principle, which is, using pictures to represent words. So as an example, here's a word. Can you write it using pictures? I'll give you a couple seconds. Got it? Okay. Great. Here's my solution. You could use the picture of a bee followed by a picture of a leaf -- and that's "belief," right. There could be other solutions. In the case of the Indus script, the problem is the reverse. You have to figure out the sounds of each of these pictures such that the entire sequence makes sense. So this is just like a crossword puzzle, except that this is the mother of all crossword puzzles because the stakes are so high if you solve it.
Mine kolleger Iravatham Mahadevan og Asko Parpola har gjort nogle fremskridt. Jeg vil vise jer et eksempel på Parpola's arbejde. Her er en rigtig kort tekst. Det indeholder 7 lodrette streger efterfulgt af et fisketegn. Jeg skal nævne, at disse segl blev brugt til at præge lermærkater, som blev fastgjort til varebundter, så det er sandsynligt at nogle af disse mærkater, indeholder købmændenes navne. Det viser sig, at der i Indien er en lang tradition for navne som er baseret på stjernebilleder, og en stjernekonstellation står for fødselstidspunktet. I dravidianske sprog, er ordet for fisk "meen" som lyder, som ordet for stjerne. Og syv stjerner kunne stå for "elu meen" som er det davidianske ord for Karlsvognen. På samme måde, er der en anden sekvens på seks stjerner som kan oversættes to "aru meen" som er det gamle dravidianske ord for stjerne-konstellationen Plejaderne. Og til sidst er der andre kombinationer, såsom denne fisk med noget som ligner et tag ovenpå den. Det kunne oversættes til "mey meen", som er det gamle dravidianske ord for Saturn. Det var ret spændende. Det lader til, at vi kommer fremad.
My colleagues, Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola, have been making some headway on this particular problem. And I'd like to give you a quick example of Parpola's work. Here's a really short text. It contains seven vertical strokes followed by this fish-like sign. And I want to mention that these seals were used for stamping clay tags that were attached to bundles of goods, so it's quite likely that these tags, at least some of them, contain names of merchants. And it turns out that in India there's a long tradition of names being based on horoscopes and star constellations present at the time of birth. In Dravidian languages, the word for fish is "meen" which happens to sound just like the word for star. And so seven stars would stand for "elu meen," which is the Dravidian word for the Big Dipper star constellation. Similarly, there's another sequence of six stars, and that translates to "aru meen," which is the old Dravidian name for the star constellation Pleiades. And finally, there's other combinations, such as this fish sign with something that looks like a roof on top of it. And that could be translated into "mey meen," which is the old Dravidian name for the planet Saturn. So that was pretty exciting. It looks like we're getting somewhere.
Men beviser dette at disse segl indeholder dravidianske navne baseret på stjernekonstellationer ? Ikke endnu. Vi kan ikke på nogen måde bekræfte disse tolkninger, men hvis flere og flere af sådanne tolkninger giver mening og hvis længere og længere sekvenser synes at være korrekt, så ved vi, at vi er på rette spor. I dag kan vi skrive ord såsom TED med egyptiske hieroglyffer og i kileskrift, fordi disse to blev dechifreret i det 19. århundrede. Dechifreringen af disse to skrifter gjorde det muligt for disse civilisationer at tale direkte til os. Maya'erne begyndte at tale til os i det 20. århundrede, men Induscivilisationen er stadig tavs.
But does this prove that these seals contain Dravidian names based on planets and star constellations? Well not yet. So we have no way of validating these particular readings, but if more and more of these readings start making sense, and if longer and longer sequences appear to be correct, then we know that we are on the right track. Today, we can write a word such as TED in Egyptian hieroglyphics and in cuneiform script, because both of these were deciphered in the 19th century. The decipherment of these two scripts enabled these civilizations to speak to us again directly. The Mayans started speaking to us in the 20th century, but the Indus civilization remains silent.
Betyder det noget ? Induscivilisationen tilhører ikke bare sydindere eller nordindere eller pakistanere. Den tilhører os alle. De er vore forfædre dine og mine. De blev gjort tavse af en uheldig begivenhed i historien. Hvis vi dechifrerer skriften kan vi få dem til at tale til os igen. Hvad vil de fortælle os ? Hvad kan vi lære om dem ? Om os ? Jeg kan ikke vente.
Why should we care? The Indus civilization does not belong to just the South Indians or the North Indians or the Pakistanis; it belongs to all of us. These are our ancestors -- yours and mine. They were silenced by an unfortunate accident of history. If we decipher the script, we would enable them to speak to us again. What would they tell us? What would we find out about them? About us? I can't wait to find out.
Tak.
Thank you.
(Applaus)
(Applause)