A challenge to archaeologists and liguistics

deafdrummer

deafdrummer

Active Member
Joined
May 17, 2009
Messages
1,240
Reaction score
12
This is a straight-up challenge to the archaeology and linguistics community. You are an archaeologist under Indiana Jones, and you found this script on a wall in a building buried under sand in the middle of the Sahara Desert. What is it, and what does it say? The author has been dead for untold thousands of years.
 

Attachments

  • text-on-a-wall.png
    text-on-a-wall.png
    47.1 KB · Views: 45
deafdrummer said:
This is a straight-up challenge to the archaeology and linguistics community. You are an archaeologist under Indiana Jones, and you found this script on a wall in a building buried under sand in the middle of the Sahara Desert. What is it, and what does it say? The author has been dead for untold thousands of years.
Click to expand...

Where in the Sahara desert was the building located?

what is the working "known" date to its construction?

Was the building sealed?

What is the last known entry to the building?

Where in the building was the script found?

What is known of the culture?

What other artifacts have been found in the vicinity?

Was it in relief or etched?

are there any compatible findings to it?

answer those first.

as for the script start by identifying the most common character use din it? and move on accordingly


example.
the most common used letter in English is E.
 
I have no idea. Judging from the looks to have cuneiform and arabic influences along with Egyptian hieroglyphs playing a small role. Each symbol represents a phonetic sound that when put together form words, sentences, and complete thoughts. There is spacing between sets of characters which indicate either words or sentences, but might not mean anything.

Oh yeah, in order for a linguists to make sense of the text, they would need to see either the original document or a copy of it because even that can give a clue on its possible meaning and interpretations.
 
Then you have misread my statement. I am writing as the person who died many thousands of years ago and left behind this writing. You must find a way to determine what this is and what it says. Remember, I'm dead. I can't answer these questions. Let's pretend that this is a seance, and I decided to show up uninvited, and I holographed to you this text as you see it, presenting it to you as a puzzle.

hoichi said:
Where in the Sahara desert was the building located?

...
Click to expand...

Edit: I reread what I said and didn't clarify initially that I'm the dead author. My mistake.
 
Last edited:
I'm not an archaeologist or a linguist, which is probably why I have no idea what this says. But after looking at it my brain keeps wanting to play with it. I started by marking off (with like colors) words that appear more than once, or pieces of words - maybe a root word in one place and the same root with a suffix somewhere else.

Curse you deafdrummer hahahaha!

tuatara-albums-puzzle-picture6312-starting-color-code-common-words-parts.png
 
I am a visual person.
I rotated it 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees.
I held a mirror at the top and sides.
I squinted at it.
I got frustrated and ran a Google image search using it.

I have determined it says "Silly Konijnen, you look ridiculous".

It was fun trying to figure it out though! :)
 
deafdrummer said:
Well, what does it say? What kind of writing system is it based on?
Click to expand...

first question: still no clue.

second question: it has about 20 characters, so it seems we're looking at an alphabet of consonants and vowels forming words associated with a spoken language.
 
Not sure how useful frequencies are but
tuatara-albums-puzzle-picture6315-14.png
appears most frequently in the passage (14 times). It also occurs within what appear to be suffixes like
tuatara-albums-puzzle-picture6316-suffix1.png
and
tuatara-albums-puzzle-picture6317-suffix2.png
at the end of different words. I'm not sure if that mark that looks like a subscript creates a different letter or a variant on an existing letter. I'm assuming it's not punctuation like a comma, because it sometimes occurs in the middle of a word. (As opposed to the little circle, which I'm taking to be a period.)
 
konijnen said:
i am a visual person.
I rotated it 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees.
I held a mirror at the top and sides.
I squinted at it.
I got frustrated and ran a google image search using it.

I have determined it says "silly konijnen, you look ridiculous".

It was fun trying to figure it out though! :)
Click to expand...

lol
 
It doesn't look like Sumerian or Arkkadian, if it is real, I'm guessing it's not semetic or ancient. I'll look into it..
 
Careful: "application/octet-stream"/

What is an "application/octet-stream" MIME attachment, and how can I see it?

A MIME attachment with the content type "application/octet-stream" is a binary file. Typically, it will be an application or a document that must be opened in an application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor. If the attachment has a filename extension associated with it, you may be able to tell what kind of file it is. A .exe extension, for example, indicates it is a Windows or DOS program (executable), while a file ending in .doc is probably meant to be opened in Microsoft Word.

No matter what kind of file it is, an application/octet-stream attachment is rarely viewable in an email, Usenet, or web client. If you are using a text-based client, such as Pine, trn, or Lynx, save the attachment to your account, and then transfer it to your personal computer using SFTP. IU Webmail allows you to save attachments directly to your personal computer; see In IU Webmail, how do I use attachments? If you are using a workstation-based client, such as Thunderbird or Outlook, the application should be able to extract and download the attachment automatically. After downloading an attachment through any of these methods, you must then open the attachment in the appropriate application to view its contents.

Note: Before opening attachments, even from trusted senders, you should follow the guidelines listed in Best practices for computer security.

In addition to the generic application/octet-stream content type, you may also encounter attachments that have different subtypes (e.g., application/postscript, application/x-macbinary, and application-msword). They are similar to application/octet-stream, but apply to specific kinds of files.
 
Back
Top