{"id":17415,"date":"2012-10-22T09:10:15","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T14:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17415"},"modified":"2012-10-22T09:10:15","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T14:10:15","slug":"want-to-learn-a-new-language-how-about-proto-elamite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/22\/want-to-learn-a-new-language-how-about-proto-elamite\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to learn a new language? How about proto-Elamite?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have the ability to decode the world’s oldest undeciphered texts<\/a>, you can be our first proto-Elamite scholar:<\/p>\n

“I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough,” says Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.<\/p>\n

Dr Dahl’s secret weapon is being able to see this writing more clearly than ever before.<\/p>\n

In a room high up in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of early civilisations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out light.<\/p>\n

This device, part sci-fi, part-DIY, is providing the most detailed and high quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay tablets. This is Indiana Jones with software.<\/p>\n

It’s being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200BC and 2900BC in a region now in the south west of modern Iran.<\/p>\n

And the Oxford team think that they could be on the brink of understanding this last great remaining cache of undeciphered texts from the ancient world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have the ability to decode the world’s oldest undeciphered texts, you can be our first proto-Elamite scholar: “I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough,” says Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster. Dr Dahl’s secret weapon is being able to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,370,16],"tags":[288,287,400,134],"class_list":["post-17415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-middle-east","category-science","tag-archaeology","tag-iran","tag-language","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4wT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17416,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415\/revisions\/17416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}