インダス文明の文字 — 5,000年の沈黙
◈解読に貢献した人物
フィンランドの学者。インダス文字研究60年。ドラヴィダ語系統仮説を提示。
「インダス記号は文字ではない」という論争的な仮説を提示。
◈どのように解読されたか
Indus script has about 400 basic signs. Current approaches: 1) Frequency analysis — identifying patterns in common signs. 2) Language comparison — matching with Dravidian (Tamil) grammatical structures. 3) Image interpretation — inferring meaning from animal, plant, and geometric signs. None has produced decisive results. The core barriers: inscriptions are too short (average 5 signs), no bilingual exists, and the underlying language is completely unknown.
◈実際に解読された文字
インダス印章の典型的な配列：[動物の絵]＋[5〜7個の記号] — 動物は氏族または身分の表示、記号は名前または肩書きという仮説が有力だが、証明はできない。
◈解読の前後の物語
The Indus Civilization (Harappan civilization), flourishing around 2600–1900 BC, included the world's largest cities of the time. Mohenjo-daro alone had a population of ~40,000. Their writing is the Indus script.
No breakthrough. A 2009 computer analysis showed Indus signs have structural properties of natural language — but that's far from decipherment. Steve Farmer controversially argues the signs are a non-linguistic symbol system, not writing at all.
The Indus Civilization declined abruptly around 1900 BC. The cause — climate change, invasion, or internal collapse — remains debated because the script can't be read. It is the only one of the world's four great ancient civilizations whose writing remains undeciphered.