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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Two things about this article registered on my bogometer:

1. In the image of the hands on the cave wall, some of the images are positive and some are negative. The negatives were plausibly made by the technique described in the article (put hand on wall, blow dust at wall) but the positive images could not possibly have been made that way.

2. The translations of the tablets seem implausibly precise. How could we possibly know that a particular bit of ancient Sumerian (or whatever it is) translates as the Anglicized name "Gal Sal" or "Sukkalgir" or (most implausibly) "En-pap X"?

Seems just a tad odd.

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The "positive" handprints are still surrounded by a halo. So, blow dust on wall, put hand on wall, blow different-colored dust over hand on wall? Either that or dip hand in dust, put hand on wall.

I thought of both of those possibilities, but I don't think they can explain these images.

1. For the dark colored positives I don't see any evidence of the dark color bleeding through the light halo. Also, some of the positives have fingers that are faded, and some are overlaid by negatives. A light halo overlaying a dark base layer can't account for those.

2. The positives are too solid to simply be handprints. If you just make a handprint, it will have gaps in the center of the palm and between the palm and fingers (among other places). But all the images are solid silhouettes.

"2. The translations of the tablets seem implausibly precise. How could we possibly know that a particular bit of ancient Sumerian (or whatever it is) translates as the Anglicized name "Gal Sal" or "Sukkalgir" or (most implausibly) "En-pap X"?"

This is the catalogue data for the tablet: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P0052...

(The fourth drawing is of the two (!) cylinder seals "signing" the tablet.)

Weirdly, the best diagram of the writing I can find is on the cover of The Oriental Institute 2010-2011 Annual Report (http://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/s...). (Yeah, just the front page. There's probably an article in there somewhere.)

This version of proto-cuneiform is a syllabary with glyphs representing "KUR", "SAL", "EN", "PAP", etc. (The "X" indicates a missing glyph; there's a chip off the tablet.)

For translation, Sumerian and Akkadian, both in cuneiform, were used for record keeping and official inscriptions for a very long time, at least through the Persian empire. Sumerian, I think, was used as the language of record for a good while even after Aramaic became the lingua franca of the region. (Sumer was a leading producer of skilled information workers, a.k.a. scribes, through the period of the Persian Empire, at least.) I don't remember the whole story of decoding the languages, but there are many multi-lingual inscriptions and literally tons of these tablets, including a lot of student work, word lists, and other textbook things, and letters to people who spoke other languages (see, for example, the Amarna letters).

As for pronunciation, you've got me there. I assume it's by correspondence with other languages that we do know how to pronounce, or possibly by weaker relationships; Sumerian is (AFAIK) unrelated to other languages, but Akkadian is Semitic and Aramaic (and some other languages) are Indo-European.

Whoo, hey! Just found this note from the copyright page of the Annual Report:

"Overleaf: This text appears to identify two named slaves in the possession of a third individual. The sign for “slaves” in fact derives from two distinct signs, one for male ( ) and one for female ( ) slave. Typical of proto-cuneiform texts, the inscription does not include a preposition or verb, which would clarify the roles of the participants. This ambiguity is, in part, resolved by tablet format and the organization of information into cases. OIM A2513. Clay. Purchased (Jemdet Nasr?). Ca. 3100 bc. 4.6 x 4.6 x 2.4 cm. After Christopher Woods, “The Earliest Mesopotamian Writing,” in Visible Language: inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and beyond , edited by Christopher Woods, p. 39, fig. 2.6 (Oriental Institute Museum Publications 32; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2010). Photo by Jean Grant"

Pity the glyphs didn't make it through cut-n-paste.

Wow, thank you for that amazingly informative reply! I wish I could give you ten upvotes. This is what HN comments should be all about.

> some of the images are positive and some are negative

It depends on the color of the rock underneath. When white dust is blown on a dark surface one might get the impression of a handprint rather than the outline.

Doesn't seem plausible. Some of the positives are the same dark color as the halo on some of the negatives. The rock looks to me like its all the same tan color underneath.

Also, take a look at the hires:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/SantaCru...

A the top center you will see a couple of positives that overlap each other. How did that happen?

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