Note: Readers who are not interested in all the details can simply skim the boldfaced parts.

After my Reddit post critically reviewed Yajnadevam's claim that he had "deciphered the Indus script with a mathematical proof of correctness," he could have simply chosen to ignore my post (or react to it with verbal abuse) if he had absolutely no interest in scientific dialogue. However, despite the polemical nature of some of my comments on his work, he was thick-skinned enough to respond and discuss, although the conversation moved to X after it ended on Reddit. After I posed some specific questions to him on X, he has acknowledged errors in his paper (dated November 13, 2024) and the associated procedures, such as the discrepancies between Table 5 and Table 7 of his paper as well as mistakes in a file that was crucial for his "decipherment." I have also apologized for badgering him with questions, and I have thanked him for allowing even rude questions and being willing to find common ground.

He has said that he will issue corrections and update his paper (if it can be corrected). Whenever he does that, he can directly send it to an internationally credible peer-reviewed journal if he considers his work serious research. Until then, we cannot blindly believe his claims, because any future non-final drafts of his paper may be erroneous like the current version. His work can be easily peer-reviewed at a scientific journal, as detailed at the end of this post. He has said that he doesn't "expect any" significant changes to his "decipherment key," and so I requested him, "If you claim mathematical provability of your decipherment again, please document everything, including your trial-and-error process, and make everything fully replicable so that you can then challenge people to falsify your claims." Any future versions of his paper can be compared and contrasted with the current version of paper (dated November 13, 2024), which he permitted me to archive. I have also archived his current "Sanskrit transliterations/translations" (of the Indus texts) on his website indusscript.net and some crucial files in his GitHub repositories: decipher.csv, inscriptions.csv, and xlits.csv of his "lipi" repository; README.md, .gitignore, aux.txt, testcorpus.txt, prove.pl, and prove.sh of his "ScriptDerivation" repository; and population-script.sql of his "indus-website" repository.

This whole saga, i.e., Yajnadevam's claim of a definitive decipherment of the Indus script "with a mathematical proof of correctness" and his subsequent acknowledgement of errors in his paper/procedures, demonstrates why the serious researchers of Indus script haven't claimed that they "have deciphered the Indus script with a mathematical proof of correctness!" Here is a list of some of those researchers:

• Bryan K. Wells and Andreas Fuls who have built/maintained the Interactive Corpus of Indus Texts, which is a significant extension of Asko Parpola's work and Iravatham Mahadevan's work (digitized at The Indus Script Web Application);
• Rajesh P. N. Rao, Nisha Yadav, Mayank Vahia, Hrishikesh Joglekar, Ronojoy Adhikari, Satish Palaniappan, Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Dennys Frenez, Gregg Jamison, Sitabhra Sinha, Pallavee Gokhale, Ayumu Konasukawa, and several others.

If Yajnadevam decides at some point in the future to finalize and submit his paper to a credible scientific journal, the peer review can proceed in two simple stages, especially if he makes no significant changes to his paper. In the first stage, the following questions may be posed:

• The archived "Sanskrit decipherments" of some inscriptions contain some odd segments such as "aaaaa." Some odd-looking "decipherments" of inscriptions (such as those with identifiers 229.1, 284.1, 533.1, 1264.1, 2197.1, 3312.1 related to CSID identifiers H-1312, H-1030, H-2175, H-239, M-1685, M-915, respectively, for example) are "*saaaaan," "*ravaaaaanaa," "*aaaaaanaa," "*aaaaanra," "*dapaaaaanaa," "*aaaaaya." How are any of these purported "decipherments" in the language that is represented in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, i.e., Vedic/Classical Sanskrit? (In answering this question, if any ad hoc liberties are needed to read the aforementioned strange strings as Sanskrit, then the claimed "decipherment" would be invalidated automatically.)
• As Dr. Fuls explains in his talk, "The most frequent sign is Sign 740 (so-called "jar sign"). In patterned texts, ... it occurs mostly in terminal position, and it is therefore [most likely] used as a grammatical marker. ... But the same sign is also used 34 times as a solo text ... In these cases, ... [it is most likely] used as a logogram." As Dr. Fuls and the other researchers listed above have argued (with convincing evidence), some signs are logographic and/or syllabic/phonetic and/or semasiographic, depending on the context. Thus, the "unicity distance" for the Indus script/Sanskrit is much larger than one claimed by Yajnadevam. How can a "cryptanalytic" method that maps signs (like the "jar sign") only to syllable(s)/phoneme(s) guarantee that the "jar sign" does not have any non-syllabic/non-phonetic interpretation in some contexts?
• As explained on Yajnadevam's repository, his procedure hits "a dead end (no matches)" if "the dictionary is not augmented." This augmentation process is ad hoc and theoretically has no end until one luckily tweaks the augmentation file "aux.txt" in just the right way (to force-fit the language to the Indus script). Where is the full documentation of the trial-and-process used to adjust "aux.txt"? How is each word "aux.txt" a valid Sanskrit word that is not one-off in nature, given that words like "anAna" were previously added to "aux.txt" inappropriately? If "aux.txt" was tweaked continuously (until a match is found luckily) in the case of Sanskrit but not another language, isn't this double standard illogical, especially if any other language is "ruled out" as a candidate for the Indus script?
• What are the "Sanskrit decipherments" of the seals and tablets (with M77 identifiers #1217, #1279, #2364, #4548, #4509, and #4508, i.e., the CISID identifiers M-1797, M-1819, M-810, H-962, H-935, H-1273, respectively) shown in Figure 3 of this paper, and how do the "Sanskrit decipherments" rule out the possibilities suggested in that figure?
• If Yajnadevam claims that the hypothetical "proto-Dravidian" languages can be ruled out as candidates for the Indus script, then what is the basis of such a claim when the those "proto-Dravidian" languages are unknown? Even if we assume that the hypothetical "proto-Dravidian" languages were "agglutinative," how can we be sure that they did not have some other structural features that aligned with patterns in some of the inscriptions that seem to be syllabic/phonetic in nature?

If the above basic questions cannot be answered in a convincing manner, then there is no point in even examining Yajnadevam's procedures or replication materials (such as the code files) further. If he manages to answer these questions in a convincing manner, then a peer reviewer can scrutinize his code and algorithmic procedures further. In the second stage of the refereeing process, a peer reviewer can change the dictionary from Sanskrit to a relatively modern language (e.g., Marathi or Bengali or another one that has some closeness to Sanskrit), tweak "aux.txt" by using some liberties similar to the ones that Yajnadevam takes, and try to force fit the Indus script to the chosen non-ancient language to falsify Yajnadevam's claims.

I would like to end this post by mentioning that Mahesh Kumar Singh absurdly claimed in 2004 that the Rohonc Codex is in Brahmi-Hindi. He even provided a Brahmi-Hindi translation of the first two rows of the first page: "he bhagwan log bahoot garib yahan bimar aur bhookhe hai / inko itni sakti aur himmat do taki ye apne karmo ko pura kar sake," i.e., "Oh, my God! Here the people is very poor, ill and starving, therefore give them sufficient potency and power that they may satisfy their needs." Not surprisingly, the claim got debunked immediately! However, in Singh's case, he was at least serious enough about his hypothesis that he submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal, which did its job by determining the validity of the claim. Now ask yourself, "Which serious researcher shies away from peer review of his work?!"

[NOTE: Yajnadevam has responded in this comment and my replies (part 1 and part 2) contain my counterarguments.]

What I mean is if there are any theories about non surviving indo-european languages and/or language families, for example as substrates of the surviving ones, that also have not been reconstructed from existing ones or otherwise attested (like Tocharian has) but simply hypothesized to explain for example a certain substrate, or similar.

For example, was there another indo-european group and language in Scandinavia before the proto-germanic group? What I don't mean is theories related to the present or historically known languages or language families, that exludes languages such as Thracian, Tocharian et cetera.

Any mentions or theories you have come across would be welcome!

How come there's a few proto Indo-European similar myths stories all over the world ?

Like the proto Indo-European creation myth story of the two brothers, one of whom sacrificed the other to create the world.(Also in the bible) The story of the seven sisters. The myths about a flood that destroys the world four times in the past.(Also in the bible)

How its possible for diffrent sasitys, in other parts of the world, in a different continentto to have very similar myths? Maybe the legend's are true ?

Do the Centum and Satem languages of the IE family correlate to Haplogroups R1b and R1a respectively? Even though they're not exactly distinct families of IE, there seems to be something going on, but I haven't confirmed it.

With the exclusion of Armenians, I've noticed that R1a is prevalent in different subclades amongst Satem speakers like Slavs, Balts, and Indo-Iranians, while R1b is seen amongst Centum Italo-Celtic, (if that's confirmed) Hellenic, or Germanic languages, as well as the Tocharian speakers from back then, with genetic studies from them showing prevalences of R1b, which is strange as some people claim that we don't actually have Tocharian DNA when we clearly do.

How did Sanskrit get it's Voiceless aspirated series?

There’s an obvious linguistic similarity between the Greek night goddess ‘Nyx’, Roman ‘Nox’, Norse ‘Nótt’, and (tenuously) Vedic ‘Nisha’. Has there been a proposal in PIE scholarship that these goddesses descent from an original night goddess? Or does she most likely have a different origin?

Title.

Was wondering if anyone has noticed as many results of people from these regions scoring paternal haplogroup R1b as often? I have encountered several instances of people from this part of the world scoring R1b so far.

Thoughts? Thanks !

https://i.redd.it/1kkdmxe4y7ee1.gif

As the title says, what was the climate, geography, fauna and flora like in the region, and even further; of the Corded Ware and Yamnaya horizons. In what kind of natural world did these people live?

I think the term is officially sipra. Is this symbolic or physical?

First off I want to clarify that I believe in the Aryan migration theory. The genetic and linguistic evidence is very sound. I'm just curious on your guys thoughts as to why the archeological evidence is lacking?

Where are all the kurgans located, and has any sort of analysis been conducted on the kurgans, such as:

1. DNA analysis on the people buried there
2. Dating
3. Map where they’re all found

Also, was it only the Yamnayas that used kurgans and not the other groups, like Andronovo or Sintashta?

In both Iranian and Indian mythlogies , there is the concept of a heavenly river (harahwati and saraswati) , are both of these referring to the same river ? Do other Indo-European mythologies also have such goddesses ?

Yajnadevam (Bharath Rao) has authored a paper titled "A Cryptanalytic Decipherment of the Indus Script," which is available at this link but has not yet been published in a credible peer-reviewed journal. The paper (dated November 13, 2024) claims that the Indus script represents the Sanskrit language and that he has deciphered "the Indus script by treating it as a large cryptogram." In a post on X, he has claimed, "I have deciphered the Indus script with a mathematical proof of correctness."

This Reddit post provides a critical review of Yajnadevam's paper and shows that his main claims are extremely absurd. [Note: The main points are highlighted in boldface to make it easier to skim this post.] This post also has two other purposes: (1) to give u/yajnadevam a chance to publicly defend his work; and (2) to publicly document the absurdities in his work so as to counter the misinformation that some news channels are spreading about his supposed "decipherment" (although I am not naive enough to hope that he will retract his work, unless he is intellectually honest enough to admit that his main claims are utterly wrong). I hope that the media outlets give less (or no) attention to such ridiculous claims and instead give more attention to the work of serious researchers like Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay, who has summarized her insightful work on the Indus script in this YouTube video of her recent talk, which I came across while writing this post.

What is a cryptogram? In general, it is just a puzzle containing a set of encrypted writings. For the purposes of his paper, Yajnadevam defines a cryptogram as a "message in a known language encoded in an unknown script." (He also says that "a syllabic or phonetic script can be modeled as a cipher and solved using proven mathematical methods.") Based on his own definition, a cryptogram-based approach to Indus script decipherment works only if we are certain that the unknown script only represents a language (and never symbolism in a broader sense) and if that language is definitely known to us.

Based on the several methodological choices specified in his paper, the approach taken by Yajnadevam essentially involves asking and answering the following question.

If hypothetically the inscriptions in the current version of the Interactive Corpus of Indus Texts (ICIT) had a standardized language structure (with syllabic or phonetic script) and represented Sanskrit words/phrases in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (while assuming that this dictionary represents a static language), then what is a decipherment key (i.e., mapping) that gives the best possible dictionary matches for those inscriptions?

Of course, Yajnadevam may entertain himself by playing the above "toy game" and answering the above question. However, it is nothing more than a thought experiment. Finding an answer to the above question without substantiating the assumptions in the first part of the question (that starts with an "if") is not the same thing as deciphering the Indus script "with a mathematical proof of correctness." I show below that his paper does not substantiate any of the assumptions in the first part of that question.

Do the inscriptions in the current version of the ICIT have a standardized language structure (with syllabic or phonetic script)? Not necessarily!

The ICIT comprises only the inscribed objects uncovered/unearthed so far, and some of those objects have missing parts; thus, the ICIT is necessarily an incomplete corpus (and any "decipherment algorithms" would have to be rerun as more objects get uncovered, since they may possibly have additional signs/symbols). Moreover, Yajnadevam assumes that the ICIT contains syllabic or phonetic script and that none of the inscriptions are logographic in nature. He argues that "the script is unlikely to be logographic" based on his subjective qualitative assessments, such as his opinion that a "significant fraction of the rare signs seem to be stylistic variants, accidentally mirrored signs, cursive forms or word fragments." His use of the words "unlikely" and "seem" suggest that these assessments are essentially subjective (without any quantitative framework). His opinions also do not take into account the context of each inscribed object (i.e., where it was found, whether it is a seal or another type of object, whether it has inscriptions on multiple sides, and so on). No "mathematical proof of correctness" uses words/phrases like "unlikely" and "seem to be." His approach also relies on several other unfounded (and unacknowledged) assumptions. For example, he says in the paper, "Of the total 417 signs, the 124 'ligatured' signs ... are simply read as if they are their component signs, they add no equivocation and their count must be reduced from the ciphertext alphabet. Similarly, if the same sign can be assigned to multiple phonemes, the count must be increased." However, he does not acknowledge explicitly that his opinion on how to read/interpret 'ligatured' signs is not an established fact. Similarly, his so-called "decipherment" assumes (i.e., by the use of the word "if" in the last sentence of the quote) that "the same sign can be assigned to multiple phonemes," but he nevertheless absurdly claims (without any acknowledgement of such assumptions) that his "decipherment" has "a mathematical proof of correctness."

He ignores the recent published peer-reviewed papers of Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay: "Interrogating Indus inscriptions to unravel their mechanisms of meaning conveyance" (published in 2019) and "Semantic scope of Indus inscriptions comprising taxation, trade and craft licensing, commodity control and access control: archaeological and script-internal evidence" (published in 2023). These two papers as well as her several other research papers are summarized in this YouTube video of her recent talk. Mukhopadhyay's papers show that it is very much possible (and even likely) that the nature of most Indus inscriptions is semasiographic and/or logographic (or some complex mix of both, depending on the context). Thus, not every single part of every inscription in the ICIT may necessarily be syllabic or phonetic. For example, Figure 3 of her 2019 paper (reproduced below) shows the "structural similarities" of a few examples of Indus seals and miniature-tablets "with the structures found in modern data-carriers" (e.g., stamps and coins of the Indian rupees, respectively). Of course, this is just one of the numerous examples that Mukhopadhyay provides in her papers to show that the possibility that Indus inscriptions are semasiographic/logographic cannot be ruled out. In addition, unlike Yajnadevam (who ignores whether the inscriptions were on seals, sealings, miniature-tablets, or other objects), Mukhopadhyay considers the contexts of the inscribed objects in her analyses, considering the fact that more than 80% of the unearthed inscribed objects are seals/sealings/miniature-tablets. In addition, since the inscribed objects were found in different regions of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), it is possible that there were regional differences in the way some of the signs/symbols were used/interpreted. Interested people could also explore for themselves the patterns in the inscribed objects at The Indus Script Web Application (built by the Roja Muthiah Research Library based on Iravatham Mahadevan's sourcebook).

Figure 3 of Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay's 2019 paper

Do the inscriptions in the current version of the ICIT definitely represent Sanskrit words/phrases in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, and can it be assumed that this dictionary represents a static language? Not really!

According to Yajnadevam's own definition of a cryptogram (in this context), his decipherment approach only works if know what language the script is in (even if we assume that the script only represented a language and never any kind of symbolism in a broader sense). How does he go about "determining" which "language" the script is in? He first starts out by saying, "Dravidian is unlikely to be the language of the Indus Valley Civilization." After a few paragraphs, he then says, "At this point, we can confidently rule out Dravidian and indeed all agglutinative languages out of the running for the language of the Indus script." He then immediately locks in "Sanskrit as the candidate" without even considering the related Indo-European languages such as Avestan, which is an Indo-Iranian language like Sanskrit. He then treats "Sanskrit" as a static language comprising all the Sanskrit words and phrases in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary. This whole approach is problematic on several fronts.

First of all, he uses the word "Dravidian" as if it is a single language. The term actually refers to the family of "Dravidian languages" (including modern forms of Tamil and Telugu) that all descended from some proto-Dravidian language(s). Even though "ūr" is a proto-Dravidian word for "village" and "ūru" is a word that means "village" in Telugu, he inaccurately claims, "As observed by many others, Dravidian has no words for ... ūru city." He later says, "Since proto-Dravidian has only been reconstructed to around 800 words, it is likely to cause false negatives and therefore a Tamil dictionary is more suited. We hit many dead ends with Tamil. Firstly, words with triple repeating sequences are not present in Dravidian. So we would be unable to read inscriptions like H-764 UUU." There are several issues with these statements. First of all, the lack of full knowledge of the proto-Dravidian language(s) is not a reason to rule out proto-Dravidian as a candidate for the language(s) of the IVC; in fact, incomplete knowledge of proto-Dravidian and its features should be the very reason to NOT rule it out as a candidate. In a peer-reviewed paper published in 2021, Mukhopadhyay concludes that it is possible that "a significant population of IVC spoke certain ancestral Dravidian languages." Second of all, modern Tamil is not the only Dravidian language. Old Tamil as well the modern and old forms of languages such as Telugu and Brahui are all Dravidian languages. He has not run his analysis by downloading the dictionaries for all of these Dravidian languages. Third of all, the inability to read inscriptions like "UUU" (in inscription H-764) using modern Tamil is perhaps a result of the possibly mistaken assumption that "U" only represents a language unit. For example, Mukhopadhyay proposes in her 2023 paper that "the graphical referent of U might have been a standardized-capacity-vessel of IVC, which was used for tax/license-fee collection. Thus sign U possibly signified not only the metrological unit related to the standardized-capacity-vessel, but also its associated use in taxation/license-fee collection." She also says, "Moreover, the triplicated form of U (UUU) occurs in certain seal-impressions found on pointed-base goblets, possibly denoting a particular denomination of certain volumetric unit." Based on her comprehensive analysis, she proposes that "the inscribed stamp-seals were primarily used for enforcing certain rules involving taxation, trade/craft control, commodity control and access control ... [and that] tablets were possibly trade/craft/commodity-specific licenses issued to tax-collectors, traders, and artisans." Overall, she suggests that the "semantic scope of Indus inscriptions [comprised] taxation, trade and craft licensing, commodity control and access control."

Yajnadevam also makes several verifiably false statements, such as the following: "Every inscription in a mixed Indus/Brahmi script is in the Sanskrit language, even in the southernmost and the oldest sites such as Keezhadi in south India." As a news article in The Hindu confirms, the inscriptions found at Keezhadi (or Keeladi) are in the "Tamil Brahmi (also called Tamili)" script and contain words like "vananai, atan, kuviran atan, atanedunka, kothira, tira an, and oy" that are Old Tamil words and not Sanskrit words.

Even if entertain his baseless claim that proto-Dravidian language(s) could not have possibly been the language(s) of the IVC, it is not clear why Sanskrit is the only other candidate he considers. He dedicated an entire subsection of his paper to "rule out" proto-Dravidian and Dravidian languages as candidates, but he never once even considers Indo-Iranian languages other then Sanskrit, especially when Old Avestan "is closely similar in grammar and vocabulary to the oldest Indic language as seen in the oldest part of the Rigveda and should therefore probably be dated to about the same time" (Skjaervø, 2009). Given the similarities between Old Avestan and the early form of Sanskrit in the oldest parts of the Rigveda, Yajnadevam should have also (by his very own logic) considered Old Avestan as a possible candidate for the language of IVC (if the IVC had one language and not multiple languages), given that he considered Sanskrit as a candidate. However, he has not even mentioned Old Avestan (or any other Indo-Iranian language) even once in his paper and has certainly not "ruled it out" as a candidate (even if we entertain his odd methodology of elimination). In fact, within his own framework, "ruling out" Old Avestan as a candidate is untenable because he claims in his paper that many of the Indus inscriptions represent phrases (or portions of verses) in the Rigveda. (As the Wikipedia article on Vedic Sanskrit explains, "many words in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda have cognates or direct correspondences with the ancient Avestan language.")

Even if we further entertain his unevidenced claim that Sanskrit is the only possible candidate for IVC's language (if the IVC had only one language), his methodology still suffers from numerous issues. By using the whole of Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary as the language dictionary for his algorithm, he implicitly assumes incorrectly that different groups of words in the dictionary did not belong to different time periods, and so he implicitly assumes wrongly that "Sanskrit" was a static language. However, as the Wikipedia article on Vedic Sanskrit grammar explains (and the sources cited in it elaborate), Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit differed quite a bit in terms of morphology, phonology, grammar, accent, syntax, and semantics. As the Wikipedia article on Vedic Sanskrit explains, there were multiple distinct strata even within the Vedic language. Additionally, he also does not explain why he chose to use the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary as the dictionary for his algorithm instead of other available dictionaries, such as the Apte Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary.

As explained above, Yajnadevam has made numerous extremely ill-founded and even preposterous assumptions and claims in his paper. Thus, his so-called decipherment key (or mapping), which he obtained at the end of his unserious "toy game" or thought experiment, is utterly useless, and so his claim that the Indus script represents "Sanskrit" does not have anything close to "mathematical proof of correctness" whatsoever!

Moreover, based on several recent archeo-genetic studies (published in top peer-reviewed journals), such as Narasimhan et al.'s (2019) paper titled "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia," we now know that the speakers of Indo-Iranian languages (from which Indo-Aryan, i.e., a very archaic form of Sanskrit, descended) did not migrate to the IVC region until around or after the Late Harappan phase began (circa 2000/1900 BCE when the IVC began declining and the IVC people started abandoning their cities and began searching for new ways of life). Thus, the possibility that Indo-Aryan language(s) were spoken by the IVC people during the 3rd millennium BCE or earlier (i.e., during the early or middle Harappan phases) is extremely unlikely and is seen as quite absurd by almost all serious scholars working on the Indus script. Also, if it were the case that the Indus script was indeed used to write Sanskrit or its early form, then it is very difficult to explain why there are no known inscriptions in Indus script (or any written records for that matter) from the Vedic era and after the decline of the IVC (around the beginning of the first half of 2nd millennium BCE) until about a millennium later. In fact, works of Vedic or early Sanskrit literature (such as the Rigveda, which was composed in the last half of 2nd millennium BCE) were only transmitted orally until they were committed to writing much later (towards or after the end of last half of the 1st millennium BCE). Because Sanskrit was a spoken language, it did not have a native script and was written in multiple scripts during the Common Era. Even the Sanskrit word for inscription/writing (i.e., "lipi") has Old Persian/Elamite roots (and Sumerian/Akkadian roots further back). The oldest known Sanskrit inscriptions (found in India) are the Hathibada Ghosundi inscriptions from about 2nd or 1st century BCE. All of the credible archeo-genetic/linguistic information available so far suggests that it is highly unlikely that the IVC people spoke Sanskrit (or an Indo-Aryan language) during or before the 3rd millennium BCE, and so it is highly unlikely that the Indus script represents Sanskrit. However, even if we do not take into account this archeo-genetic/linguistic data, Yajnadevam's ridiculous claims fall apart quite disastrously because of the untenability of his very own baseless assumptions!

[Yajnadevam has responded in this comment and my replies to it contain my counterarguments.]

[For a final update/closure on this matter from my end, see the following post: Yajnadevam has acknowledged errors in his paper/procedures. This demonstrates why the serious researchers (who are listed below) haven't claimed that they "have deciphered the Indus script with a mathematical proof of correctness!"]

The discovery of the Sapalli culture gave a powerful impetus to the study of such important issues as the problem of urbanization of the region, the formation of the first state formations and the Bactrian cultural genesis in general. This paper considers another aspect of the cultural-historical retrospective of the materials of this culture, namely monofunctional clay forgeries found in the burial-cult site of Buston VI. When they are studied and verified with Vedic sources, a large number of parallels are observed, which cannot be a mere accident. The peculiarity of the products under consideration is that they are represented by a standardized set, which includes anthropomorphic figurines that are directly identified with certain deities of the Vedic pantheon, various products that had a ritual and symbolic orientation, as well as ritual utensils (a vessel and a devil-spoon) for sacred offerings. The work defines not only their parallels with the data of the Vedas, but also the origin associated with the arrival of the steppe Eurasian tribes in the territory of Northern Bactria. The relevance of this study is determined by the possibility of restoring ideological ideas and structuring the picture of the mythological worldview of the Sapalli society in the Late Bronze Age. The influence of the cattle-breeding Srubna-Andronovo tribes, which left a significant mark on the culture of ancient farmers, which served as the basis for the formation of a new Vedic culture in North India, is emphasized.

But if one should adhere to the opinion that this literature, and the Rigveda, as its most ancient component, are the same age as the crafts under discussion, then the obvious conclusion is that the religion of the ancient Vedas and the religious beliefs of the population of Northern Bactria are verifiable on the basis of the artifacts of the B-VI necropolis. Thus, summing up the data published herein on the monofunctional clay handicrafts, this research material proves, at most, that the artifacts draw their origin from the establishment and dissemination of the religious beliefs of the ancient Indo-Aryans, and, at least, that the same cultural element must have affected both the formation of these artifacts and the existence of the trends mentioned here. The entire complex of the clay handicrafts of B-VI mark the address of the Sapalli community to the mythologized deities of the Vedic pantheon and Vedic cosmology

http://uzscite.uz/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/67-74.pdf

http://uzscite.uz/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/21-43.pdf

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08275-2

If anyone can answer much appreciated.

The recent publication of a Scythian tomb with many horse and human sacrifices is getting a lot of attention. But none of the print articles I've seen about it have included the really interesting information that Geno Caspari (study author) discusses on this episode.

Here are some highlights:

It seems to be an obvious Scythian cultural site, from almost exactly the same time period as Arzhan 1, and with very similar style and decorations--indicating that the Scythian cultural world was already well developed and spread across a large region in the early Iron Age.

This funeral display, with a large mound surrounded by sacrificed horses and riders, is very similar to how Herodotus describes funerals for Scythian rulers--so it seems that his writings have been confirmed.

Also, Caspari, revealed that the initial publication only had data from 18 horses, but since then they have found many more, and the total number is over 100. Additionally, there are sacrificed human riders on the horses, and they are in small groups. Each group has similar metal gear, but the metallurgy is different from group to group--suggesting that each small group was a sacrifice from a different tribe, which came from a different region.

And finally, Caspari, hinted that there is a lot more in this tomb that hasn't been published yet, and got very coy when Patrick Wyman asked him if there is a body in the tomb. Sounds like the answer is probably yes, and that will be the subject of a future publication. I hope so!

Edit to add: One other, unfortunate, detail that Caspari mentioned--it will probably be a long time before we get any ancient DNA data from the remains, because the site is located in Russia. Russian labs don't have the capacity for that kind of analysis, and due to geopolitics, they will not let samples be sent out of the country. That's a bummer.