Ten Mysterious Languages We Are Still Trying to Decipher

By far our greatest resource for understanding our past is what has been written about it. Information from archaeology, while a vital facet of piecing together human history, gives us only dead places and dead people, and records, documents and language are needed to breathe life into it.

In this we are lucky. The two great languages of history in the western world, Latin and Greek, have been preserved through near constant (if increasingly archaic) usage, and we can trace a near unbroken line from the use of these languages today through those who spoke them for the first time.

Other great languages enjoy a similar link, such as the dialects of China, India, or Arabic. But not all empires survived, and not all texts from history can be read today. What secrets could these mysterious artifacts contain, awaiting only a moment of academic brilliance or their Rosetta Stone to unlock them?

Here are ten examples from history of texts we cannot decipher.