"Question: how can archaeologists translate ancient scriptures or languages? Answer: ‘It’s basically a giant jigsaw puzzle.’ "
Does the author actually think this is a good answer? I don't see how it tells you anything at all.
The author is using a variety of examples from ELI5, and goes on to clarify that the answers there are imperfect, debated, discussed, etc.
Why would you conclude that the author thinks this is a good answer vs. just an answer to help the reader understand the subreddit?
With that said, it does tell you something if you’re open to it. To me, it says: “there are a lot of pieces (often literally), and an archaeologist has to put those pieces together”. Is it an oversimplification? Of course. But remember the age the answer is supposed to target.
I literally think it conveys no information at all. It's a metaphor, and a metaphor that the hearer won't understand unless he already knows the answer to his question. He could just as informatively have said "it's complicated".
Ah, I think I may see the missed connection! It's like a jigsaw puzzle because archaeologists really do assemble fragments of old scripts. Sometimes the translation efforts can only give you probabilistic answers that in turn influence where you're likely to place a fragment.
A family member of mine works in the space academically, and they really have giant catalogues with pictures of fragments, and they experiment with different arrangements and what they would mean to their translation efforts. Unfortunately I don't have a link. :/
EDIT: a random CS paper that talks about automated solutions to the pure assembly part of this (without the text translation): https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.10553
That's not the explanation, it's just the first sentence (as an example of the tone, I presume):
> It's basically a giant jigsaw puzzle.
> You find some rock that has the same text in two languages (the rosetta stone for example helped decipher old egyptian)
> Then you read more and more texts and reconstruct new words from context. Often you have multiple possible interpretations but then new texts are found and you can improve your old assumptions with a new context.
