A team of computational linguists has successfully used a deep-learning model to decipher a series of 8th-century Vatteluttu script inscriptions found on coral-stone pillars in the Chagos Archipelago. The inscriptions contain fragments of a lost Sanskrit treatise, the Samudra-Gati-Vijnana, which details a sophisticated understanding of deep-sea thermal currents and their impact on trans-oceanic navigation.
The text describes a systematic classification of ocean temperatures and salinity levels used by medieval Indian mariners to exploit seasonal 'under-currents' for faster travel between Southeast Asia and the African coast. This discovery underscores the high level of empirical oceanographic knowledge possessed by Indian maritime guilds, suggesting a level of scientific inquiry that predates the European Age of Discovery by several centuries.