Indus script facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Indus script |
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Seal impression showing a typical inscription of five characters
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| Type | Undeciphered possibly Bronze Age writing or proto-writing |
| Spoken languages | Unknown (see Harappan language) |
| Time period | c. 3500–1900 BCE |
| ISO 15924 | Inds |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | |
The Indus script, also called the Harappan script, is a collection of mysterious symbols. People from the Indus Valley Civilisation used these symbols a very long time ago. Most of these writings are super short, which makes it hard to know if they were a real writing system or just simple marks. We still don't know what language they might have written.
Even though many smart people have tried, nobody has figured out what the Indus script means. There's no "Rosetta Stone" (a text written in two languages) to help us. The symbols didn't change much over time, but how they were put together sometimes changed depending on the place.
Contents
Discovering the Indus Script
The first time anyone saw these symbols was in 1875. A drawing of a seal with Harappan symbols was published by Alexander Cunningham. By 1992, about 4,000 objects with these symbols had been found. Some were even found far away in Mesopotamia, showing that the Indus people traded with them. There are over 400 different signs in all the known writings.
Some experts think the later Brahmi script might be connected to the Indus system. Others believe the Indus symbols might be linked to ancient megalithic graffiti symbols found in India and Sri Lanka. These symbols probably weren't a full language, but they might share some signs with the Indus script. Many linguists, like Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola, believe the script is related to a Dravidian language.
Where We Find the Symbols
