Harappan 'non-texts'?

[Steve Farmer]

Thanks to Lance Cousins and Michael Witzel for their recent input. The
only thing I'd add to Michael's summary of new data (unknown to me,
but supporting the view that I've recently expressed -- that
there were no extended but 'lost' Harappan texts) is to give a
somewhat different spin to the following:

Michael writes:

> We now see that the earliest Indus signs appear already at 3300 BCE
> and that they are different from the (also used) (simple) potters'
> marks (such as a cross, + , etc.). Some of the characters
> look similar, though not exactly the same, as in those of the much
> later Har. period, 2600-1900. Others disappear
> (for example, the star * symbol!
> So much for the fish sign = "star"? and, as maintained recently
> by some, an alphabet in 3300 BCE?? Another first!)

The interesting new finds that are displayed starting at
http://www.harappa.com/indus2/index.html (pointed out by Michael)
do indeed appear to be early forms of later Harappan
logographs. This undermines claims by Parpola and others that the
script emerged full-blown around 2600 BCE. But isolated pictograms
or logograms found in these early stages aren't
relevant to the question of evolutionary pressures
on the script in periods when that script *did*
exist in full form. In discussing 'scribal pressures
for simplification,' e.g. -- the key point in my argument
(sharply contrasting Harappan with Sumerian and Akkadian
scripts) -- it is important to begin the comparison
at a much later period in the mid 3rd millennium, when chains
of symbols in Harappan were regularly combined in longer
inscriptions. From this point on, the evolutionary contrast
in the scripts is dramatic.

Lots of interesting new data locked in Michael's post! The regional
variations that he notes in logograms are especially relevant to
to points already made about the highly restricted uses of the script.
'Vale written literate...' -- indeed!

Steve