No
ancient literate civilizations are known — not
even those that wrote extensively on perishable materials — that
didn't also leave long texts behind on
durable materials.
That's
all it takes to refute the 130-year-old Indus-script myth — and
it is only one of many obvious arguments. Despite the fact that
the Indus system was around for at least 700
years (and arguably much longer), with 'inscriptions' (if that's
the right word) found on thousands of objects, the longest Indus
'text' on
a single surface is 17 signs long*,
and the average has under 4.6 signs — as
expected in many nonlinguistic sign systems.
Note
that we have much longer texts even from so-called proto-writing
systems (e.g., proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite) and special limited-use
scripts like the Ogham system (used in medieval Britain). Compare
the longest Indus 'text' with a proto-Elamite accounting
tablet.
For
discussion of how Indus symbols functioned,
see Farmer,
Sproat, and Witzel 2004. The evidence in this paper
is further expanded in Farmer, Weber, Barela, Sproat, and Witzel
(see Paper
Abstract).
See
our $10,000 Prize Challenge to 'Indus Script' Adherents
*Seal
M-314, illustrated in the links to this page. Indus-script adherents
(Parpola, Possehl, Kak, Wells) like to say that the longest Indus 'inscription'
is 26 signs long. The reference is to two examples of a mass-produced
molded object (M-494 and M-495) on which, if you add up all the symbols
on three separate surfaces
gives you this number. The claim that
this is a continuous 'message' is a stretch,
and the view that the 'message' involves 'writing' is even weaker:
three of the symbols in a row on one of the surfaces is a known
representation of a sacrificial bowl. For the evidence, see
photographs.
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2006, 2007 Steve Farmer