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Yamamoto Kansuke, named as author in the Sword Scroll text

Samurai Secrets Revealed: English Translation of the 500-year-old ‘Sword Scroll’ Provides Fighting Tactics Including ‘Egg Them’

A medieval samurai text recently translated into English gives many practical tips on fighting an enemy and advises all warriors to be ‘pure of heart and in balance in their spirit’. Although...
The Three Distinct Scripts of Knossos: An Unfinished Epic

The Three Distinct Scripts of Knossos: An Unfinished Epic

Linear A and Linear B are the names given to two sets of scripts from ancient Greece. A third known writing form of the time is Cretan Hieroglyphic. The Linear A script was used by the Minoan...
Clay Tablet inscribed with Linear B script dated 1450-1375 BC, Knossos

Reading Between the Lines: Decrypting the Scripts of the Minoans and Mycenaeans

Pick up a book in a language you have never learned. Read the first couple pages. See if you can understand any aspect of the culture between its covers. It is difficult, isn't it? It remains so...
The Tărtăria Tablets

Are the Tărtăria Tablets Actually Written in Hungarian?

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found writing that dates back 5000 years. This writing, found inscribed in clay, is called the Tărtăria Tablets by M.R. Reese. Reese makes it clear for Ancient Origins...
A photo of the Kushim Tablet.

Leaving A Mark in History: The Oldest Known Named Person

The oldest named person that we know belongs to an individual from Sumer, one of the earliest urban civilisations in southern Mesopotamia, in present day Iraq. A person’s name is an integral part of...
Can You Solve the Mystery Behind This Intricately Carved Skull?

Can You Solve the Mystery Behind This Intricately Carved Skull?

Experts from a wide array of organizations are examining an intricately carved skull discovered in an antique shop in Vienna in 2011. The skull, believed to be 300 years old, is completely covered...
The ‘Elephant Slab’, (left) and sketched markings (right).

The Elephant Slabs of Flora Vista: Enigmatic Artifacts with Ancient African Origins

In Did West Africans live in the Four Corners Region of the United States from 12th Century ? , published in Ancient Origins, I discussed the Mande inscriptions found in the Four Corners region of...
Intellectual, Code Breaker, Blasphemer: George Smith and the Ancient Chaldean Account of Genesis

Intellectual, Code Breaker, Blasphemer: George Smith and the Ancient Chaldean Account of Genesis

George Smith was born in 1840 in London to poor parents, and consequently left school at the tender age of fifteen to take up an apprenticeship with Messrs Bradburry and Evans, a firm of engravers...
Madrid Codex. Maya Codex also known as Tro-Cortesianus. Origin unknown. Epoch: Late Postclassic.

Unravelling the Mysteries Trapped Within Mayan Hieroglyphs

For hundreds of years, linguists have been trying to decode the ancient hieroglyphic script of the Mayans, left behind on monument carvings, painted pottery, and drawn in handmade bark-paper books...
A collection of tablets displaying Indus Valley script.

Decoding the mysterious ancient Indus Valley script will shed light on powerful ancient civilization

Linguists have cracked many tough scripts, from Mesopotamian cuneiform to Egyptian hieroglyphic to Central American Mayan glyphs, but there are a few ancient, mysterious scripts still in the field...
Rongorongo glyphs

The Ancient Origins of Some Dead or Dying Languages

By Tara MacIsaac , Epoch Times Language is said to be the key to understanding a culture—the medium by which the arts and ideas of a people have been passed down over generations. Many languages are...
Petra - Jordan

Oldest Arabic inscription provides missing link between Nabatean and Arabic writing

A Saudi-French archaeological team has discovered the oldest known inscription in the Arabic alphabet at a site located near Najran in Saudi Arabia, according to a report in Arab News . The finding...
Ulysses at the court of Alcinous - Homer

Homer: From Oral Tradition to Canon

The Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the oldest narratives to withstand time. Accredited to Homer, these poetic verses have preserved memories from an era gone by, an age of heroes. Although, it beckons...
Historian Cang Jie

The Legendary Origins of the Chinese Language

By Tanya Harrison , Epoch Times Strong fingers traced delicate lines, four ancient eyes blinked in mild astonishment, and the idea of a new form of communication began to grow. Just as Nu Wa breathed...
Photo of a relief-section of hieroglyphs in the great temple of Ramses II in Abu Simbel

Unravelling the literacy of the Egyptian Pharaohs

It is well known that only about one percent of ancient Egyptians mastered the difficult art of reading and writing hieroglyphics. But there is little information about the education of royal...
Danube Valley Civilization Artefacts

Is the Danube Valley Civilization script the oldest writing in the world?

The Danube Valley civilization is one of the oldest civilizations known in Europe. It existed from between 5,500 and 3,500 BC in the Balkans and covered a vast area, in what is now Northern Greece to...
Dongba Hieroglyphics

The last hieroglyphic language on earth and an ancient culture fighting to survive

The Dongba symbols are an ancient system of pictographic glyphs created by the founder of the Bön religious tradition of Tibet and used by the Naxi people in southern China. Historical records show...

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