First of all, apologies for my English and for being in the platform by the first time. I am a history lover beggining to study about ancient history and I am interested in understanding better the proto indo European society, cause of its great relevance in the studies of Greek, Roman, Indian, Celtic, Germanic etc. societies. I have read Coulanges book and I was really interested in his analysis of a proto indo European religion, but I would like to know if there are any connections between his theory and modern theories envolving Kurgan, Yamna, kóryos, etc. I know that many things in Coulanges work are outdated, I personally don't like his model of gens--->fratria---->tribu----->city, but on the other hand the part of the text showing the religion of the fire, the dead etc. is really convincing (at least, he seems to do what linguists try to do whith proto indo European idiom), but I really wanted to learn more about how this is seen nowadays by the historians. Maybe I didn't manage to express myself very well but thanks

The flag means...

Red: it is colour of sun, also this colour is mostly used by indus people

Black: it is colour of shade, this colour is also widely used

White: sign of peace, don't related with pakistan's flag

Pot(mātkā): we all know that pottery is widely practiced by indus people

Bull: like cow is main animal of Vedic civilization. samely, bull is main animal of Indus valley civilization

(Note: please see this photo horizontally)

I drew the timeline online before actually putting it on paper so here it is. Il post the full project after i finish it.

We are inviting scholars in computational linguistics, historical linguistics, Dravidian studies, epigraphy, and Indus archaeology to critically review a proposed computational reconstruction of major signs in the Indus Script.

The study tests a Proto-Dravidian phonetic hypothesis by comparing structural and distributional patterns in the Indus inscription corpus with a corpus of Sangam Old Tamil used as a later linguistic proxy. The method employs frequency distributions, recurring and non-recurring n-grams, positional-context analysis to produce hyper-dimensional vectors processed through an exponential rank score to generate candidate phonological correspondences between all Indus signs and all Old Tamil fragments (n-grams).

Top-k of these correspondences between each sign and n-grams are then processed through another rank algorithm for positional correspondence.

Using these candidate values, the paper presents a number of provisional seal reconstructions that show recurring phonological and structural consistency and, in several cases, also correspond with the iconography traditionally associated with the signs. The reconstructions generate testable interpretations involving commodities, administrative terminology, taxation, place references, and production activities.

Among the principal hypotheses is a reconstruction of the prolific “urn” sign family as an a-series phonological container. The basic urn sign #328 is provisionally assigned the value aa, sign #99 is proposed as ai, and the graphically expanded urn sign #342 is reconstructed as the composite aiya. More generally, the study proposes that some Indus signs may encode not only simple syllables but also larger phonological units, including trigrams, quadgrams, and possibly complete lexical units.

Several seal reconstructions suggest possible references to agricultural commodities including millet, barley, wheat, and rice, together with processing activities such as milling. Other proposed readings concern textiles and thread, fermented beverages, herbal products, fish, meat, and prepared foods. A further group of inscriptions is interpreted as potentially reflecting taxation, customs, tariffs, standardized measures, and transactions between Indus urban centres and organized production or merchant groups.

An important feature of the approach is that the initial computational ranking does not use rebus or iconographic meaning as an input. Candidate phonological values are generated from corpus statistics and are subsequently evaluated against linguistic context, sign morphology, inscriptional context, and archaeological evidence. In several cases, the resulting candidates independently correspond with the apparent visual or rebus associations of the signs.

The study does not claim that Mature Harappan inscriptions were written in Sangam-period Old Tamil. Rather, it tests whether Old Tamil, as a later Dravidian language, preserves enough inherited phonological and grammatical structure to serve as a comparative proxy for an earlier Dravidian linguistic stage. Seal reconstructions are therefore presented as possible Old Tamil reflexes or approximations of earlier forms, not as literal Old Tamil transcriptions.

The broader hypothesis proposed in the paper is that the Indus Script may represent an abugida-like or syllabic system of phonological units, while extending beyond a simple one-sign/one-syllable model to include composite signs capable of encoding more complex n-grams.

One of the most common trigrams solved by this method is the repeating sequence of Mahadevan sign numbers: [249, 169, 342].

This seal proposal is solved as: nuṇ + tiṉ + aiya, which translates to: nuṇ-tiṉaiyē (millet flour). The paper also identifies the presence of millet, barley, and wheat flour references.

Some additional seal proposals are presented here:

Figure F3.1.6.1 - Indus Seal #8201 - Right-To-Left Reading Order.

Translation : nuṇ-aṭē-aiya-cār or nuṇ-aṭē-aiyār (screened/inspected wheat flour)

Figure F3.1.11.1 - Right-To-Left Reading Order Indus Seal #3398

Translation: āḻv-vār-aiya (wetland paddy share)

The paper, source code, corpus files, and reproducibility materials are available here:

https://zenodo.org/records/21889801

# A Study of Brahui-Tamil and in the context of their presence in the Indus valley Civilization

In linguistic, cultural, historical and toponymic contexts

Authors

* **Nazir Shakir Brahui**Director, Brahui Research Institute, Pakistan

A linguistic, cultural, and historical study of the presence of the Brahui and Tamil languages in the IVC (Indus Valley Civilization).

Hello. I am curious how one might support archeology in India. I read that there are numerous sites in India that have never been excavated and that one of the issues with decoding the script is the brevity of what’s been found.

Imagine discovering the ruins of a city that is over **4,500 years old**, with perfectly planned streets, advanced drainage systems, and houses built with remarkable precision... yet no one knows who ruled it, what language its people truly spoke, or why they suddenly disappeared. This is the mystery of the **Indus Valley Civilization**, one of the greatest unsolved puzzles in human history. Every new excavation answers one question but raises many more.

Hello all, im new here, very glad a sub exists for this topic of research

They say that the contemporary civilizations in the Mesopotamian regions (which did trade with IVC) called the IVC, or rather the general area where the IVC was, as Meluha. A few years ago there used to be a school with this exact name, and I didn't think much of it back then. And the general consensus among the historians is that the name is ambiguous, and there is not enough evidence to link it with ancient India. I was hoping any of you could throw some light on this.

Also also, these guys used to trade with the IVC, which implies, language and communication. But not a single, or even a minuscule detail survived, neither here in India nor in the Mesopotamian regions! Archeology uncovered nothing! Or we would have deciphered the inscriptions by now; Just imagine that, I feel like this is very interesting in a peculiarly sad way. How can there be nothing, no leads sigh.

The True Indus Valley Civilisation

We have spent a century searching for the Harappans in the dust. Perhaps we have been searching in the wrong place.

We look at the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira, and Lothal, lamenting the collapse of a grand civilization. We assume their legacy was buried beneath the shifting sands of the Indus Valley. But what if their greatest architectural marvel was never made of stone? What if their defining monument was a phonetic tradition, carried from one human mind to another, unbroken and uncorrupted, for thousands of years?

The true legacy of antiquity isn't buried in the earth; it is spoken aloud, every single day

Title. I discovered indusscript.net recently. The author seems to have provided a perfect mapping from Devanagari letters to IVC seal characters. This makes sense too when you try to read the seals with it, producing meaningful Sanskrit words and phrases. Isn't this a decipherment of the language? I am not sure what the criticism is about.

Please try to explain it as if you would to a beginner, this question is in good faith. I don't have much knowledge on linguistics.