He Learned an Ancient Language Experts Couldn’t Solve
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Mehmet is an ordinary guy who learned a 3000-year-old DEAD language that even the world’s top experts struggled with. And he had NO training—just primary school education! Who IS this man? And how did he learn the language? This story is going to blow your mind!
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 An ordinary guy learned a dead langauge
0:40 Meet Mehmet
1:49 The job at the castle
4:48 Saily eSIM
6:24 An illegal border crossing
7:28 Cracking the code
14:38 The secrets of Urartian
15:43 How we crack dead languages today
17:32 Mehmet gets what he deserves
19:16 A mystery without a clue (Voynich manuscript)
🎬 Video Clips:
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What a beautiful soul
This man is an international treasure!!! ❤❤❤
Oh, indeed. We need more Champoleon’s like him!
This video is very personal to me. I’m an archaeologist and have worked in eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and the Hurrian site of Tell Mozan in northern Syria. At Mozan, the director played the oldest song in the world for us as we ate dinner on the outdoor terrace.
Kudos! How was the song? Did it sound like anything that’s been passed down to us?
Is it the same one that Olly played a piece of?
@@leviashanken7281 Yes, it was the same one. It was a truly memorable experience!
@@JN-pl7wk I’m sure!
I wonder if I ever met you in September 2001. I was at Tell Mozan on a visit after coming down from Diyarbakir (from my own dig site) on the day that all the goodies were on display for the Hassake Governor’s inspection. I was told to “go away, we are busy” at the front gate intercom. I persisted and was admitted but told to stay out of the way. I really loved my experience that day. Any chance of that meeting?
@ I was there in 2009 and 2010. I took over the lab as my doctorate is in Anthro not Near Eastern studies. The directors were pleased as no one else wanted to bother with all those artifacts not destined for a museum. I bought my airline ticket for the 2011 season 2 days before the place erupted in war. BTW, I wrote my dissertation on OB cylinder seals. What site were you working on?
There is no talent and drive like that of an enthusiastic hobbyist
As always, your videos are wonderful explorations of language and culture. This is a great story!
(By the way, the Egyptologists would say “hieroglyphs” as the noun and “hieroglyphics” as the adjective for Middle Egyptian writing.
I live in Van, Turkey. My history teacher said that she met with him when she was a student in YYU university ( a university in Van ). We used to talk about this kind of topics but she’s studying to become a professor of a history branch. We haven’t seen each other for a long time.
massive respect for mehmet. it’s unbelievable that he actually decoded a lost language
I’m glad Mehmet received the recognition he deserves. It would have been easy for others to take credit, especially since he doesn’t have formal training in archaeology. Mehmet’s such a passionate, cool guy!
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Hello, can you make a video (if you want) of the wonderness of the Qur’an if it has uniqueness if a 5-6mins video will it would be an amazing video to watch.😊
This is a genuinely really inspiring video.
1. The languages of Papua New Guinea
2. Signing languages
3. A philosophical take on the double empathy problem (super fascinating I promise)
4. The difference between language and dialect
My wishlist.
If anyone else can pitch in on this comment, maybe our wish is granted. Anyway – cheers, mate. Much ❤ from 🇸🇪
“A language is a dialect with an army behind it.” (Linguistically, there are no real differences between dialects and languages. The differences are only based on social and political grounds. For a linguist, every way of communicating is a language.)
The double empathy problem! Now you’re talking! That is super great. Cheers
Urartian civilization didn’t vanish, but transform to ancient Armenian kingdom
That’s true! But do bear in mind that the Armenians spoke the ancestor of Armenian, the ancestor of Old Armenian, an Indo-European language, at the time. So it was probably like how it is so often with neighboring unrelated language groups in close contact: the Sumerians and the Akkadians; the Hattians and the Hittites; the Minoans and the Mycenaeans.
Armenian has very many loanwords from Urartian from this time, as Olly mentioned, but then it gets a whole massive load of loanwords from (Iranian) Parthian afterwards.
no friend urartian and all states civilisation and now comes only one uncestors ,they are coming from coordination people ( koordinasyon or koord or kaard )
and all indio European , Semitic and altaik languages emerged from this language , and we can easily can reach to this languages if we know the way we fallow and the biggest key to this language is koordish kurmanci derivation because codes of this language uses % 80 in this language as a code ,but in sansicrit or Latin cariing this codes as codes is % 5 even in formal arabic no-one can see any of this code as a code all languages uses alfabet there is only one language uses choice code it is coordination language ( koordish )
for example
in hebruw
bavel = turmoil
in english
bible = testement
babilion = is a name of an ancient city in mezopotamia
in turkish
balta = ax
if you know the voice codes of coordination language you can understand
@@muratronai3984
Are you a gymnast? Because that was quite a stretch.
@@Brontosuchus😂 Great response!
I think I met this man… on a late August day 2001 at a place called Çavuş Tepe?…
Me thinks I bought some stone carved animals from him after he guided me around the hill top fortress there….
Memory comes flooding back suddenly
Edit, after having watched the video I am 99% sure I met this man and what a delight he was. He read the stones exactly as seen in the video. He had a makeshift gift shop in the hut serving as a visitor center where I bought a small hand carved stone grouse and a little pendant both strewn with incriptions of his making….
Uncannily, it was just the other day I remembered the name of that little detour I took off the road between Van and Güzel Su
That’s very cool and l am more than a little bit jealous. 😊
I checked the Wikipedia article of the Urarian language, and he’s not in it:(
Wow. That’s a serious oversight.
Great story!
What an amazing guy. We’re all indebted to him for his scholarship.
He’s just a chill guy
THANKS FOR SHARING GENIUS WORK
WOW! This was a delightful story, with a relatable protagonist. What an amazing man, and such an inspiration for all of us who enjoy languages and puzzles. <3
Although Kuşman made valuable contributions, it is important to note that he was not responsible for the initial decipherment of Urartian. The decipherment of the language was a gradual process carried out by linguists and scholars throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, based on comparisons with Hurrian and Assyrian, as well as the study of bilingual texts.
Mehmet Kuşman is a remarkable example of how personal dedication and a love for knowledge can lead to significant contributions to cultural preservation. Although he did not decipher Urartian, his work helped keep the memory of this ancient language alive and promoted interest in the heritage of Urartu. His story is an inspiration for those who value culture and history, regardless of their academic background.