Robinson: Lost Languages
From Scienticity
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Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages : The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts. New York : McGraw-Hill, 2002. 352 pages.
Andrew Robinson is literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement, London. His writing is engaging, his enthusiasm about his subject is obvious, and his presentation generally well-reasoned and logically presented.
This work deals with those scripts yet to be deciphered, in short, a treatise on a form of cryptography. After discussing the three ancient scripts which have already been deciphered (Egyptian hieroglphics, Linear B, and Mayan glyphs), he considers those scripts which still await decryption.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, although the size of the physical book wa a bit awkward for casual reading, and the chosen typeface for the text was a bit fine and thus created a bit of strain on these no-longer-young eyes.
From the conclusion of the book (pages 322-3):
Archeological decipherment therefore bridges both the sciences and the arts....It involves a range of scientific techniques, from chemical analysis of written materials to sign frequency analysis and comparative linguistics, which are applicable to every undeciphered script -- but at the same time the decipherer needs also to involve subtlety, the entire archaeological, historical and cultural evidence, which is unique to a particular script....
So, the decipherment of ancient scripts is a compelling intellectual and imaginative challenge; it makes history; it changes our perceptions of our place in the world; it casts new light on how we read nad write; and it is sometimes the handmaiden and interpreter of fine art. The urge to decipher is our vital response to our species' urge to express its thoughts and feelings through writing in all its unique diversiy and incredible ingenuity over five millenia. This, surely, is what most makes us human.
-- Notes by SJB
