Indus Valley Civilization and Script Decipherment

What is the main purpose of the thought experiment introduced at the beginning of the talk?

• To discuss the future of archaeology

• To compare modern and ancient languages

• To illustrate the challenges of understanding ancient civilizations

• To predict future technological advancements

Which of the following is NOT mentioned as an artifact found from the Indus Valley Civilization?

• Stone seals

• Massive monuments

• Pottery

• Copper tablets

What is one of the potential uses of the Indus seals mentioned in the talk?

• To build structures

• As currency

• For religious rituals

• To stamp clay tags for goods

What is one of the main challenges in deciphering the Indus script?

• Lack of interest from researchers

• Absence of a Rosetta Stone-like artifact

• Too many long texts to analyze

• The script is written in a known language

Which group believes the Indus script represents an Indo-European language?

• Those who think it is not a language

• Proponents of the Dravidian hypothesis

• Supporters of the Indo-European hypothesis

• Archaeologists who study Egyptian scripts

What method is used to analyze the patterns in the Indus script?

• Historical analysis

• Statistical modeling

• Linguistic comparison

• Manual transcription

What does the concept of entropy in language refer to?

• The length of a text

• The historical significance of a language

• The randomness and variation in a sequence

• The number of symbols in a script

What principle do most ancient scripts use to represent words?

• Numeric principle

• Phonetic principle

• Rebus principle

• Alphabetic principle

What is the significance of the Indus script potentially representing language?

• It would prove the civilization's superiority

• It would confirm the Indus people were literate

• It would solve all historical mysteries

• It would allow the civilization to 'speak' to us

What does the speaker suggest about the Indus script's ability to encode multiple languages?

• It is impossible for the script to encode multiple languages

• The script can only encode one language

• The script might have been used to write different languages

• The script is identical to modern languages