Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated January twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of
Speaker 1: the article I began last time, entitled how to Build
Speaker 1: the Perfect Hike by Gloria Lieu. Long straightaways with infrequent
Speaker 1: turns can be problematic, he says, because people get anxious
Speaker 1: when they're aware that they're moving in the opposite direction
Speaker 1: of their objective. The trick is to keep hikers engaged
Speaker 1: enough that they're convinced they're on the best route possible.
Speaker 1: If you're fully imbursed in your environment, Talbot says, you're
Speaker 1: not looking for another way. Talbot grew up in Maine
Speaker 1: and started building trails in college in Minnesota. When he
Speaker 1: joined his school's conservation crew. He found his people there.
Speaker 1: He recalled they were down to earth, happy and dirty.
Speaker 1: He regularly slept outdoors in the campus arboretum, showing up
Speaker 1: to class smelling like camp fire smoke. When Talbot graduated
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, trail building wasn't an established career path.
Speaker 1: Virtually no one was willing to pay a living wage
Speaker 1: to build trails, he says. Talbot enrolled in a programme
Speaker 1: run by AmeriCorps and the Student Conservation Association, which leads
Speaker 1: youth trail building crews, and learned skills like rock work,
Speaker 1: rigging and chainsaw operation. He fell in love with the challenge,
Speaker 1: physicality and satisfaction of creating something that served people and
Speaker 1: protected the environment. For several years after that, he lived
Speaker 1: out of his truck and traveled around the country, training
Speaker 1: crews for the SCA and working on projects four other
Speaker 1: trail builders, in particular veteran New England trail builder Peter Jensen.
Speaker 1: He learned the same hand building techniques used by the
Speaker 1: Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration during the trail
Speaker 1: building boom of the nineteen thirties and forties, and was
Speaker 1: inspired to likewise build trails and structures like stone staircases
Speaker 1: and bridges that could last centuries. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: he launched his own business, which to day employs several
Speaker 1: full time staff and a handful of subcontractors, and is
Speaker 1: usually engaged in multiple projects throughout New England and Patagonia
Speaker 1: to day's young trail builders enter a very different industry.
Speaker 1: Global hiking tourism is projected to grow over seven percent
Speaker 1: a year through twenty thirty three, according to the market
Speaker 1: research firm Data Intello, driven by the increasing popularity of
Speaker 1: adventure and wellness based travel. The worldwide demand for professionally
Speaker 1: built sustainable trails has just skyrocketed, says Dawn Packard, former
Speaker 1: president of the Professional Trail Builders Association, whose one hundred
Speaker 1: forty plus member companies represent twenty to thirty percent of
Speaker 1: the global trail building industry by its estimate. Talbot is
Speaker 1: a former PTBA president. People seeking more ways to get
Speaker 1: outside during the pandemic may have played a factor. The
Speaker 1: number of companies in the PTBA has grown by more
Speaker 1: than forty percent in the past six years, while revenue
Speaker 1: has grown three hundred and fifty percent to just over
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollars according to a recent member survey.
Speaker 1: Communities have come to see trails as cost effective infrastructure
Speaker 1: in the past decade, says Colorado trail builder Scott Linnenberger.
Speaker 1: A new municipal sewer line might cost thirty million dollars,
Speaker 1: for example, compared to a five million dollar estimate to
Speaker 1: build Bailey's, an eighty eight mile mountain bike trail network
Speaker 1: outside of Athens, Ohio that's projected to generate over twenty
Speaker 1: seven million dollars in taxes and tourist spending in a decade.
Speaker 1: Most new routes being designed today are mountain bike or
Speaker 1: multi use trails, often built with excavators and dozers. But
Speaker 1: when a project is in a designated wilderness area in
Speaker 1: the US, which is which in most instances prohibits not
Speaker 1: only motorized access but also motorized tools, or in a
Speaker 1: remote back country location like Alaska and Patagonia, it requires
Speaker 1: someone like Talbot, who specializes in hand built backcountry trails.
Speaker 1: It's difficult for the average highat hiker to grasp how
Speaker 1: much work goes into any trail, but hand building in
Speaker 1: a wilderness area demands a level of effort that can
Speaker 1: seem practically paleolithic. Consider the task of drilling a hole
Speaker 1: through rock without a power tool. Tailbot must line up
Speaker 1: a drill bit on a rock, hit it with a hammer,
Speaker 1: rotated a quarter turn, and hit it again, over and over.
Speaker 1: It takes an hour to drill through an inch of
Speaker 1: Sierra granite, and a crew once spent two full weeks
Speaker 1: in California's john Mere Wilderness using starbits to drill dozens
Speaker 1: of three inch deep holes so they could insert feather wedges,
Speaker 1: two L shaped shims with a wedge driven between them
Speaker 1: to split the rock. For all this work, a trail
Speaker 1: builder usually remains anonymous. You go out in the woods
Speaker 1: to gather material and you build something you hope people
Speaker 1: don't even notice. Talbot says, it's in service to the environment.
Speaker 1: You don't sign your name. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful things I could imagine doing. On the best trails,
Speaker 1: hikers enter an almost imperceptible flow state as they are
Speaker 1: pulled deeper into the natural world. After a few days
Speaker 1: shooting grades in El Chatin, Talbot and Bittner took me
Speaker 1: backpacking on the trails they designed in Perito Moreno to
Speaker 1: experience that feeling firsthand. On the Big Loop, a ten
Speaker 1: point five mile circumnavigation of the Bel Grano Peninsula, Talbot
Speaker 1: pointed to how the trail contoured the mountain side, swooping
Speaker 1: in and out of micro ungulations in the terrain to
Speaker 1: turn users and thus shift their perspective between the snowy tigers,
Speaker 1: striped mountains in the distance and glowing grasses in the foreground.
Speaker 1: If there isn't continuous variation in what we're doing, we
Speaker 1: tend to lose gratitude for it. Talbot explained, changing a
Speaker 1: user's picture like this leads to a continuous renewal of
Speaker 1: the senses, even in places where massive views abound. He'll
Speaker 1: shift a hiker's attention between small, up close details and
Speaker 1: grander pistas. Whimsy or play is another element of a
Speaker 1: well designed track. When out, Talbot helps fellow New England
Speaker 1: trail builder Erin Amadon Reroot, a popular and badly eroded
Speaker 1: trail in New Hampshire. The pair wove the trail to
Speaker 1: every beautiful glacial erratic that we could possibly tie into,
Speaker 1: Talbot says, referring to the boulders strewed about the landscape
Speaker 1: the prehistoric movement of glaciers. They also anchored turns with
Speaker 1: rocks so that hikers couldn't see what was coming around
Speaker 1: the bend, and in one spot, Talbot used boulders to
Speaker 1: construct what trail builders call a gateway when a trail
Speaker 1: threads between two obstacles like a pair of trees. Gateways
Speaker 1: make hikers feel as if they're walking through a portal
Speaker 1: passing from one experience to another, says Talbot. Exciting and
Speaker 1: engaging hikers like this makes them forget they're even walking
Speaker 1: a trail. They think they're just meandering through the woods.
Speaker 1: Amadon says, conversely, hikers rebel against a poorly designed trail.
Speaker 1: On my third day in ill Chatin, i hiked the
Speaker 1: fourteen mile round trip from town to the Laguna Delos
Speaker 1: Terrace on my own. For the first time, I noticed
Speaker 1: ways that the trail influenced my experience. How for example,
Speaker 1: the wood in case steps had an awkward rhythm, as
Speaker 1: Talbot had pointed out, they were astride and a half
Speaker 1: long instead of once dried, and how hikers had thus
Speaker 1: flowed like water around them, widening the trail on either
Speaker 1: side and providing feedback without realizing it. Talbot was also
Speaker 1: right about the energy shift in the final one point
Speaker 1: two miles, when my scenic hike became a slog. There
Speaker 1: were beautiful views of the valley below, but my eyes
Speaker 1: were trained on my feet. Yet the summit was spectacular,
Speaker 1: and the hikers nestled among the rocks like concertgoers seemed
Speaker 1: as satisfied as I felt. The murmur of different languages
Speaker 1: filled the air as people took selfies, poured mate from Thermoses,
Speaker 1: or just stared at the cracked face of Mount Fitzroy
Speaker 1: in quiet contemplation. One young woman was crying. Talbot, like
Speaker 1: most trail builders, is motivated by a deep love for
Speaker 1: the outdoors and the belief that it can heal and
Speaker 1: transform us. He hopes that bringing more of us to
Speaker 1: wild places will persuade us to save them. Connecting people
Speaker 1: with nature could solve a lot of humanity's problems, he says.
Speaker 1: But a good trail does more and bring people into nature.
Speaker 1: It protects nature from us. The same hikers who were
Speaker 1: overcome by the sublime beauty of the lake also told
Speaker 1: me that theoretically they would prefer to walk the steeper, eroded,
Speaker 1: and more direct trail than a longer, but more moderately
Speaker 1: graded reroute. Someone seemed some seem to have mis interpreted
Speaker 1: what they were experiencing, saying they preferred the raw and
Speaker 1: natural character of the existing trail over what they envisioned
Speaker 1: as a more manicured redesign. This is a misconception that
Speaker 1: many hikers have about sustainable trails, and it makes Talbot
Speaker 1: uncharacteristically irritated. Anyone who thinks that that eroded gully is natural,
Speaker 1: that's a human made travesty, he tells me as we
Speaker 1: drive back to El Chatin from Perito Moreno, most people
Speaker 1: don't think about trails. They don't know what's natural. That
Speaker 1: may be because unsustainable trails still vastly outnumber sustainable ones.
Speaker 1: While scouting for the Laguna del Trice redesigned one day,
Speaker 1: we descended a slope adjacent and identical in aspect to
Speaker 1: the damaged mountain side. This is probably what the mountain
Speaker 1: originally looked like, Talbot told me. Instead of being brown
Speaker 1: and rock strewn like its beleaguered twin, the slope was
Speaker 1: verdant and fuzzy, liketed in vegetation. The contrast was startling.
Speaker 1: We are so habituated to the site of our own
Speaker 1: damage to the land that we don't even recognize its
Speaker 1: native state. After more than a week of tramping through
Speaker 1: the woods, Talbot and Bitner unlocked a design for a
Speaker 1: new trail, but it's unclear when their vision will come
Speaker 1: to fruition. The project is now facing an obstacle that
Speaker 1: even the most vestigious designer can't avoid politics. Last March,
Speaker 1: while Tabot was wrapping of his scouting, community members protested
Speaker 1: the APN's construction of a new all terrain vehicle trail
Speaker 1: that led up to the foot of the problematic section
Speaker 1: he had been tasked to solve. A court has since
Speaker 1: halted all projects in the area until the ap N
Speaker 1: completes the necessary environmental analysis and public input process. Even
Speaker 1: once work is greenlit, the trail faces significant hurdles, namely
Speaker 1: funding for construction and labor. Talbot's redesign sounds phenomenal, says
Speaker 1: professional climber Rollo Garibalti, who led volunteers in a two
Speaker 1: thousand eighty nine restoration of parts of the trail. But
Speaker 1: trail work, more than anything, is hard work, he reminds me,
Speaker 1: requiring lots and lots of hands. For now, the fate
Speaker 1: of the embattled upward segment of Laguna Delo's trace remains unclear,
Speaker 1: But having been with Talbot the day he figured out
Speaker 1: the reroute, I can tell you what the trail could be.
Speaker 1: The new track would begin by gently ascending through a
Speaker 1: forest of old, widely spaced langa trees. About half a
Speaker 1: mile in it would turn up hill around a small
Speaker 1: rib in the terrain to reveal a sight that made
Speaker 1: both Talbot and Bidner laugh in wonder when they found it,
Speaker 1: a willowy waterfall framed between a pair of vertical rocks.
Speaker 1: Here the trail would change tack and ascend gradually back
Speaker 1: toward the old route, crossing three more waterfalls, and emerging
Speaker 1: from the forest to sweeping views of the valley, where
Speaker 1: hikers might enjoy that paradoxical comfort of feeling like a
Speaker 1: small creature in a vast landscape. At this junction, hikers
Speaker 1: would probably see the old, eroded trail for years to come,
Speaker 1: But if this path is built, they could one day
Speaker 1: make the pilgrimage up to the Laguna de Lustrace on
Speaker 1: a route that no longer tears apart the land. They'd
Speaker 1: continue to find awe or peace or a sense of
Speaker 1: accomplishment or whatever else they came for along the way,
Speaker 1: and the old wound would begin to close as the
Speaker 1: mountain slowly heals the new rules of trail building. Professional
Speaker 1: trail builders deploy their knowledge of psychology, geography, and geology
Speaker 1: to lead highs on an immersive, ecologically friendly journey. Their
Speaker 1: best routes feel as if they are part of the landscape.
Speaker 1: Preserve the land. A sustainably built trail follows the contours
Speaker 1: of the terrain to prevent erosion. Subtle dips and rises
Speaker 1: on the path on a moderate grade insure water sheds
Speaker 1: easily immerse the user. Using rocks and trees as anchor points,
Speaker 1: helps signal turns and urges up hikers to stay on
Speaker 1: the path. A designer uses those same materials for structures
Speaker 1: like steers and bridges when needed keep hikers on their toes.
Speaker 1: The best trails feed our desire for novelty. They'll alternate
Speaker 1: between close up, intimate views and expansive vistas. It's even
Speaker 1: better if the changes unfold gradually, allowing a user to
Speaker 1: build anticipation for a grand reveal. Manage behavior wide climbing
Speaker 1: urns are easier to navigate than tight and steep switchbacks.
Speaker 1: They also discourage all users hikers, climb Himer's, bikers and
Speaker 1: equestrians from cutting the trail. Next Decoding the Lost Scripts
Speaker 1: of the Ancient World by Joshua Hammer. Across the Globe,
Speaker 1: a race is underway to crack some of the last
Speaker 1: mysterious forms of writing that have never been translated. Here's
Speaker 1: how new technology and fresh breakthroughs might help scholars solve
Speaker 1: the world's most vexing puzzles and rewrite history. The room
Speaker 1: we are in is locked. It is windowless and lit
Speaker 1: from above by a fluorescent bulb in the hallway outside.
Speaker 1: Two stories beneath, the City of London attendance in dark
Speaker 1: suits patrol silently, giving the scene an air of cinematic drama.
Speaker 1: Where in the downtime Safety Deposits Center where the Iranian
Speaker 1: British art collector Pombi's mahbub Bayan, direct keeper of one
Speaker 1: of the world's great trobes of Near Eastern ancient art,
Speaker 1: houses some of his more precious pieces under lock and key.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me at a small table, mah bu
Speaker 1: Bayan reaches gingerly into a green plastic shopping bag from
Speaker 1: Wytrous and Partners, the British supermarket chain. From it, he
Speaker 1: produces a silver beaker covered with friezes long ago hammered
Speaker 1: out in high relief. As he places the tea kettle
Speaker 1: sized vessel on the table, I can see on it
Speaker 1: the image of a helmeted, barrel chested man with a
Speaker 1: long braided beard, his arms held outward in a gesture
Speaker 1: of devotion. Mah bub Bayan emotions for me to take
Speaker 1: a closer look. Can I pick it up? I ask him?
Speaker 1: Of course, he replies. Neat Rows of engraved symbols wrap
Speaker 1: around the object. Asterisks, triangles with antenna like appendages, hatch diamonds,
Speaker 1: lightning bolts. As I hold the beaker to the light,
Speaker 1: I catch a slight tremble in my hands. The metal
Speaker 1: is so soft and pliable that I fear it will
Speaker 1: break apart in my fingers. The beaker dates to the
Speaker 1: early Bronze Age, meaning the craftsmen whoulously scratched these symbols
Speaker 1: into silver did so roughly forty three hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: What they all mean has been a riddle that's baffled
Speaker 1: archaeologists and historians. The characters belonged to a system of
Speaker 1: writing called linear Elamite, which took root between twenty seven
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three hundred BC in a peaceful kingdom
Speaker 1: called Elam in what is now southwestern Iran. The Elamite
Speaker 1: writing system endured for several hundred years before it was
Speaker 1: swept aside by another script and lost to history. Then,
Speaker 1: just over a century ago, French archaeologists excavating the Elamite
Speaker 1: capital of Susa discovered nineteen inscriptions written in stone and clay.
Speaker 1: The long sequences of signs clearly meant something, but what.
Speaker 1: For decades, the philologists studying the symbols in a quest
Speaker 1: to understand linear Elamite made little progress. For one big reason,
Speaker 1: the corpus of written material consisted of only about forty inscriptions.
Speaker 1: The code cracking researchers who piece together ancient languages generally
Speaker 1: rely on an abundance of symbols to spot repetitions, patterns,
Speaker 1: and signed clusters, the raw dead data that provide clues
Speaker 1: to grammar, syntax, names, and places. One such scholar who
Speaker 1: fell into the seemingly impossible mission of making sense of
Speaker 1: linear Elamite was Francois des Sat, a French archaeologist whose
Speaker 1: curiosity turned into a twenty year journey to decipher the
Speaker 1: writing system. His recent headline making claims of success have
Speaker 1: both galvanized public attention and incited skeptics. They've also underscored
Speaker 1: the idea that we might be at a pivotal moment
Speaker 1: in the study of these ancient scripts today, roughly a
Speaker 1: dozen forms of writing remain undeciphered, and a new generation
Speaker 1: of scholars as set forth, often with the aid of
Speaker 1: new technology, to reveal the last secrets of the ancients.
Speaker 1: Decipherers have used AI in recent years to locate arclical sites,
Speaker 1: restore illegible texts, and analyze linguistic patterns to make inferences
Speaker 1: about grammar and vocabulary. But while AI has sped up
Speaker 1: the translations of languages and writings already known to a
Speaker 1: handful of scholars, the technology has yet to demonstrate the
Speaker 1: creativity needed to decode hitherto unknown scripts. Indeed, creativity is
Speaker 1: what Dessett summoned when he set out to understand linear elamite.
Speaker 1: His first conclusion was that he needed to find more
Speaker 1: examples of the script. Around two thousand and four, he
Speaker 1: heard about the mah Bu Bayan Collection, the stockpile of
Speaker 1: Near Eastern treasures. The family claims had initially been acquired
Speaker 1: by mah Bubayan's grandfather, a physician turned archaeologist named Benjamin Machbubayan.
Speaker 1: The collection included ten silver vessels and fragments known as kunanki,
Speaker 1: decorated with images and covered by linear elamite inscriptions. The
Speaker 1: family has long maintained that Benjamin Mubabian uncovered the art
Speaker 1: himself in a tomb in Campfurus in southwestern Iran. He
Speaker 1: found them all in one place, cambiz Maubumbian told me,
Speaker 1: and then he sent them all to Paris, where they
Speaker 1: remained with relatives before making their way to London. But
Speaker 1: experts have challenged the authenticity of the Kunanki. The family
Speaker 1: has no documents proving their provenance. The mab Bubayans fled
Speaker 1: Tehran just before the toppling of the Shah in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine and arrived in London, where they became prominent
Speaker 1: art dealers. To say, eager to get his eyes on
Speaker 1: what he imagined to be linear, Elamite reached out to
Speaker 1: the mabu Bayans, who ignored his approaches for years. Then
Speaker 1: a British museum curator they trusted made an introduction. In
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, the Kunanki, which had been stored in the
Speaker 1: London vault, were delivered by a secure team to the
Speaker 1: home of mom Bu Bayan's sister Roya, where to say,
Speaker 1: it was at least permitted to inspect them. What to say,
Speaker 1: found amazed him. Laid out before him, he could see
Speaker 1: rows of symbols wrapping around beakers, cups, and fragments of
Speaker 1: broken vessels. He was elated as he snapped hundreds of
Speaker 1: photographs documenting everything, while suspecting he might never see the
Speaker 1: artifacts again. He told me that he thought, maybe this
Speaker 1: will be the last time I should get all the
Speaker 1: information possible to say. Says that the visit to Roya
Speaker 1: Mabubian's home has vastly increased the number of symbols available
Speaker 1: to him, and he hoped that among the symbols he
Speaker 1: might find the missing link he had yearned for, the
Speaker 1: break that would allow him to solve one of archaeology's
Speaker 1: most vexing puzzles. Every now and again, there are moments
Speaker 1: when history seems to lift its veil and the secrets
Speaker 1: of long lost scripts are freshly revealed. In the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, the discovery of the famed Rosetta Stone ignited
Speaker 1: a competition between england wishman Thomas Young and Frenchman Jean
Speaker 1: Frecois Champollion to decrypt Egyptian hieroglyphs the sacred writing of
Speaker 1: the Pharaohs. Three decades later, the excavation of twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred year old riverside palaces in northern Iraq set off
Speaker 1: a race between the Victorian scholars Henry Wallinson and Edward
Speaker 1: Hinks too understand a Cyrio a Sirio Babylonian. Their break
Speaker 1: through these captivated millions, stirred patriotic fervor, and made accessible
Speaker 1: the science, medicine, history, mythology, and quotidian life of some
Speaker 1: of the ancient ancient world's greatest civilizations. Deciphering ancient writing
Speaker 1: reveals how people understood the world, organized their soco acieties,
Speaker 1: and thought about love and death. The work reanimates the
Speaker 1: voices of kings and ordinary citizens alike, exposing dreams, insecurities, obsessions,
Speaker 1: and even humor. It makes the ancients human, and the
Speaker 1: scholarship underway now to recover and decipher some of the
Speaker 1: oldest and most mysterious writing is reshaping our view of
Speaker 1: how languages spread, and, in the case of linear Elamite,
Speaker 1: how early writing itself might have begun. Of course, the
Speaker 1: scripts that remain undeciphered occupy that category for a reason.
Speaker 1: They present extraordinary challenges. For instance, linguists have been working
Speaker 1: for a century to decipher Rongorongo, a collection of glyphs
Speaker 1: carved mostly into wood by the Rapa Nui people of
Speaker 1: Easter Island. Success has eluded the experts. Similarly, the ancient
Speaker 1: writing known as Etruscan, used from the seventh to the
Speaker 1: first century VC and found inscribed on clay tablets in Italy,
Speaker 1: has defied attempts to crack it for generations. But the
Speaker 1: progress that is seemingly being made on several ancient systems,
Speaker 1: among them a form of writing referred to as the
Speaker 1: Indus script, a system of writing called linear a, and
Speaker 1: certainly the advancements that Francois de Say captained on linear
Speaker 1: elamite provide instructive insight on how new tools and fresh
Speaker 1: ideas might soon reveal some of history's longest held secrets.
Speaker 1: When Drisley morning in Chennai, India, the bustling capital of
Speaker 1: the state of Tamil Nadu, I rode in an auto
Speaker 1: rickshaw out along the Bay of Bengal, traveling past a
Speaker 1: beach covered with wooden fishing boats and tin roofed shacks,
Speaker 1: returned onto a side street and stopped before a yellow
Speaker 1: concrete building marked the Indus Research Center. Inside I found
Speaker 1: Sukamar Raja Gopal, a software engineer and amateur decipherer who
Speaker 1: has been working for more than eighteen years on the
Speaker 1: Indus Script. He was hunched over a pile of academic
Speaker 1: papers immersed in what he calls my obsession. Raja Gopal
Speaker 1: describes himself as an irrepressible problem solver. He was twenty
Speaker 1: years into a software engineering career when he first grew
Speaker 1: intrigued by the ancient script, joining a long line of
Speaker 1: whitby decoders, professionals and amateurs alike who've tackled the Bronze
Speaker 1: age script, perpetually optimistic that the critical break through is
Speaker 1: right around the corner. Just last year, interest in the
Speaker 1: long running project was given a major boost after the
Speaker 1: Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu offered a one million dollar
Speaker 1: prize to anyone who solved the mystery and could prove it.
Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, the bounty has ratcheted up the stakes in
Speaker 1: the hunt for solutions. Back in the nineteen twenties, when
Speaker 1: archaeologists found the script, they recognized its importance right away.
Speaker 1: Researchers have been working at two sites, Mohenjo Daro and
Speaker 1: Harappa along the Indus River in what is now Pakistan,
Speaker 1: when they located twenty four hundred small pieces of soapstone,
Speaker 1: as well as a few bits of ivory and clay,
Speaker 1: all engraved with what looked like both abstract characters and
Speaker 1: recognizable objects, such as fil fish, water, buffalo, plants, and
Speaker 1: human like stick figures. The British archaeologists leading the excavation,
Speaker 1: Sir John Marshall, theorized that they were looking at evidence
Speaker 1: of one of the world's first literate societies, the achievements
Speaker 1: of which were, he wrote, far in advance of anything
Speaker 1: to be found at that time in Babylon or on
Speaker 1: the banks of the Nile. If Marshall suspected that he
Speaker 1: was on the brink of unlocking something extraordinary, those hopes
Speaker 1: eventually fizzled. The inscriptions on the soapstone seals are frustratingly
Speaker 1: maddeningly short. Ninety percent of them consist of fewer than
Speaker 1: four characters. The longest has only fourteen. What could you
Speaker 1: possibly communicate with that? Asks Raja Gopal. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, three noted scholars in the field published a
Speaker 1: paper titled the Collapse of the indiscript Thesis The Myth
Speaker 1: of a literate hareupon civilization. In it, they posited that
Speaker 1: the signs say nothing at all. Most recently, the Indus
Speaker 1: Research Center has become a gathering point for linguists and
Speaker 1: a locusts of modern investigation into the script. Raja Gopal
Speaker 1: began volunteering there in two thousand and nine. He had
Speaker 1: always nurtured a deep admiration for the great philologists of
Speaker 1: the past. If there were a shrine for Champollion, I
Speaker 1: would be seen worshiping there, he told me, referring to
Speaker 1: the decipher of hieroglyphics. Now he was working among Chapoleon's
Speaker 1: intellectual descendants, including Iravatham Maha Divan, an Indian epigraphist who
Speaker 1: helped establish the organization. Raja Gopal told me that Mahadevan,
Speaker 1: who died in two thousand and eight, took him under
Speaker 1: his wing. He converted what was a hobby in my
Speaker 1: head into a formal discipline. In the nineteen seventies, Mahadevan,
Speaker 1: along with a colleague named Osco Parpola, a professor of
Speaker 1: indology at the University of Helsinki, compiled separate lists of
Speaker 1: about four hundred unique signs from the end descript the
Speaker 1: characters had been glimpsed on thousands of objects found across
Speaker 1: half a dozen archaeological sites. Next, they tried to determine
Speaker 1: what they were looking at. Philologists know that all systems
Speaker 1: of writing fall into one of four categories. Some types
Speaker 1: use alphabets, composed generally of twenty five to thirty five
Speaker 1: signs denoting consonants and vowels that form words. Other writing
Speaker 1: depends on what's called a syllabary, which is a symbol
Speaker 1: used to represent a combination consonant vowel vowel consonant or
Speaker 1: consonant vowel continent that comes together to form words. A
Speaker 1: third form of writing is known as logo graphic Chinese,
Speaker 1: for example, and is composed of a galaxy of unique signs,
Speaker 1: often numbering in the high thousands, each standing for an
Speaker 1: object and action or an idea. The final category includes
Speaker 1: hybrid systems like hieroglyphics or Japanese that mix logograms and
Speaker 1: a phonetic alphabet. If the Indus script was indeed real
Speaker 1: writing and not random combination of characters, Mahadevan and Parpola
Speaker 1: figured it likely belonged in the hybrid category, as a
Speaker 1: mix of distinct word components. For phenomes, and logograms. This
Speaker 1: concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader
Speaker 1: husband Marcia, thank you for listening, Keep on listening, and
Speaker 1: have a great day.