"Why they should make the intellectual leap to embrace writing and then at the same time re-invent it in a different local form remains a puzzle."<p>There is an example from a much more recent period of history that is well known to scholars of world scripts. Cherokee writing as developed by Sequoyah was based on the example of English writing known to Sequoyah from European settlement in America, but the letter forms<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary</a><p>are not entirely identical, and indeed Sequoyah's writing system is a syllabary rather than an alphabet.<p>The work on Proto-Elamite described in the submitted article is quite interesting.
The "DIY black dome" object mentioned briefly in the article is used to create "polynomial texture map" images. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a very cool technique. <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/</a> has details, but in brief: an object is photographed multiple times from one camera position but multiple lighting positions. Software can then programmatically interpolate to how the image would look from all lighting positions. It's a way to improve on basic texture-mapping for games, of course, but it's mostly proving useful in archaeology, allowing more people to interact virtually with precious objects. PTM images can also be provide "impossible" views of objects -- e.g. giving every pixel a different lighting angle so as to maximize contrast.
I assumed at first they were talking about Linear A[1]. Ah well.<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A</a>
Why was the headline changed? The original headline [1] used the headline from the article, "Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing". For some reason it was changed either by the author or by a moderator to a meaning that is completely different.<p>[1] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/agIfl.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/agIfl.png</a>