An international team of linguists and biologists has used machine learning to decode a cache of 7th-century Box-headed script fragments discovered in central India. The deciphered texts, published in Archaeological Research Quarterly, reveal lost Sanskrit treatises dedicated to entomology, specifically the systematic classification of over 50 species of tropical myriapods, including centipedes and millipedes.
The manuscript details the medicinal properties of various secretions and provides anatomical descriptions that indicate a highly developed tradition of natural observation. This discovery suggests that ancient Indian biological sciences were far more specialized than previously understood, utilizing formal taxonomies that parallel modern biological classification systems.