The writing system, called proto-Elamite, is approximately 5,000 years old and originates from a region in the south west of modern Iran. Experts believe that it flourished only briefly and possibly died out because of a lack of scholarship in the civilisation in which it evolved, meaning it was difficult for contemporaries to learn (and hence modern linguists to translate) and it became easily corrupted and thereby useless.
It is believed that the proto-Elamites (they must surely have given themselves a catchier name) borrowed the idea of writing from the Mesopotamians, but used totally different symbols.
Dr Jacob Dahl, of Wolfson College, Oxford (where else!) has asked the general public to help the experts decipher the alphabet.
