The researchers have come up with a new theory that the ancient civilization that flourished in the Indus River basin 4,000 years ago, Indus Valley civilization (IVC) was a literate society using script that is much similar to the present day languages, such as Tamil, Sanskrit and English. In a new research, a team of Indian researchers have articulated that the mystical script symbols used by the IVC people were a hieroglyphic language, instead of mere pictograms or symbols.

The team of researchers comprised of archaeologists, historical linguists, morphologists, and computer scientists conducted a scientific research on the symbols found in the Indus Valley civilization. Comparing the IVC symbols with various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems like DNA and computer programming, the researchers found that the symbolic inscriptions of IVC were similar to the today’s languages such as Tamil, Sanskrit and English.

Working in the University of Washington, an India-born computer scientist, Rajesh Rao used statistical methods and advanced machine learning techniques to compare the system of the IVC symbols with various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems. He also compared the IVC symbols with the modern computer programming language Fortran, and found that IVC inscriptions were similar to the modern day languages.
In the study published in the journal Science, Rao claimed, “We can now scientifically show that the Indus script shares statistical properties with other natural languages such as English, Tamil, and Sanskrit.”

Commenting on an article, published in 2004, that stated that the IVC inscriptions were not a language, but mere religious or political symbols, Rao said, “Our research provides scientific evidence against claims made in 2004 that the Indus script does not represent language and is merely a set of religious and political symbols.” He added, “At this point we can say that the Indus script seems to have statistical regularities that are in line with natural languages.”

Rao explained, “For example, the letter “t” can be followed by vowels like “a”, “e”, and some consonants like “r” but typically not by “b”, “d” etc. We measured this f lexibility in the choice of the next symbol in a sequence using the mathematical concept of conditional entropy,”

He said, “This is the first quantitative evidence that the Indus script likely encoded natural language rather than just religious or political symbols, suggesting the Harappans were likely a literate civilization after all.”

The researchers from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Indus Research Center in Chennai have joined their forces with Rao to develop models which helped comparing the symbols with present day languages.

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) flourished along the Indus river, most of modern-day Pakistan, mainly the Pakistani provinces of Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan, and the modern-day Indian states of Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan. The remains of IVC have also been excavated from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. The mature period of IVC was 2600–1900 BCE. The IVC people used script symbols on  their stamp seals, amulets, ceramic objects, etc.