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Home > Language, Linguistics & Creative Writing > Linguistics > Historical and comparative linguistics > The Book of Lost Languages: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past
The Book of Lost Languages: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past

The Book of Lost Languages: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past


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About the Book

'A remarkable uncovering of hidden treasures' IAN McMILLAN, presenter of The Verb

An immersive journey into the art of decipherment and the lost past that emerges when ancient scripts are brought back to life


For centuries, the world’s earliest writing stood unread. Only through the work of decipherers did their languages begin to speak again, revealing lives that were long forgotten.

The Book of Lost Languages is part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure. It traces the epic journeys of decipherment, from the international strife that unearthed the Rosetta Stone, key to Egypt’s hieroglyphs, to the drunken wager that unsealed Old Persian, and from the malaria cure that revealed China’s most ancient writing to the proof by chocolate that Mayan writing had been unlocked behind the Cold War’s Iron Curtain. From earliest victories to latest findings, Harbour chronicles the remarkable mental feats that have restored forgotten worlds.

As it moves through these discoveries, the book celebrates the minds behind them – their strengths and quirks, their brilliance and pettiness, their inexplicable flashes of insight. It reveals the astonishing engine that drives decipherment: when we unravel forgotten scripts, we connect across millennia with the minds that created them. Through these connections, we have extended our knowledge of written history by thousands of years.

The result is an exhilarating story of people and politics, dogma and doubt, genius and ingenuity, and of the beguiling artistry behind some of the greatest puzzles ever created.



About the Author :
Daniel Harbour is a leading expert on writing systems and formal linguistics and a Fellow of the British Academy. For 25 years, he has worked with speakers of endangered languages from the United States to the South Caucasus, helping preserve their knowledge for future generations. Raised in Australia and educated at Oxford and MIT, he is one of the few people alive, outside tribal elders, familiar with the Kiowa language of Oklahoma. A research professor at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and University Paris 8, he regularly works in eight languages and is conversant in several more. He lives in London.

Review :
The Book of Lost Languages is a remarkable uncovering of hidden treasures that, once rediscovered, shine in the beautiful light of rediscovery


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9781526645982
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publisher Imprint: Bloomsbury Circus
  • Height: 234 mm
  • No of Pages: 496
  • Width: 153 mm
  • ISBN-10: 152664598X
  • Publisher Date: 08 Oct 2026
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Language: English
  • Sub Title: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past


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