Tentative Lineage 148's Metal Post: Decoding Formally Entrusted to a Hindic Math Team Under the Joint Study
The Third Appraisal Center announced on the 23rd that decoding the symbols on the metal post that drifted onto a Kameido street on the night of September 1 — provisionally registered as Lineage 148 — has been formally entrusted to a mathematical analysis team from the Hindic Federation, under the framework of the 7th International Joint Study. As previously reported, the symbols were thought to possibly represent a numbering system, but decoding work had gone largely untouched since August.
As previously reported, the Third Appraisal Center offered an interim finding on the 8th that the symbol sequence on Lineage 148's metal post might represent a numbering system rather than a written language. Since then, however, decoding work had rested largely with a single domestic researcher juggling other cases, and the researcher himself admitted, "Honestly, we'd barely touched it since August." Today's move is framed as a way to break that stalemate.
According to the Center, an agreement between co-chairs Hinokuni and the Hindic Federation led to the formal decision on the 23rd to entrust Lineage 148's symbol data to a Hindic mathematical analysis team. The Hindic Federation, as previously reported, is strong enough in mathematics that licensing fees for its models are a recurring story on the business page; an official said, "If it's likely a numbering system, we'd long thought a mathematics specialist would move faster than a linguist. This has no direct connection to Genshu's announcement, but it's proof the joint-study framework is still alive."
Anilda Rao, the head of the Hindic mathematics team taking on the assignment, told this paper in written comments, "At first glance, the photographed symbols struck me less as words than as something close to a carrying-over rule. Whether it's base ten or an entirely different base, I can't say." Rao said the analysis would begin with a statistical survey of how often each symbol appears and in what order, adding cautiously, "I can't promise at this stage that we'll learn what's actually being counted. Learning the rule of counting itself would already be a real result."
A Third Appraisal Center official warned against overexpectation: "Even if it turns out to be a numbering system, what the post itself was for remains unknown. It could be the gradations on some kind of instrument, or purely ornamental." As previously reported, tentative Lineage 148 matches no known lineage in isotope ratio, and its origin itself remains unexplained. "If we crack it, that's a major discovery. If we don't, that's nothing unusual in this world," the official said. "The Nine-Day Fog and the Suzaki knocking have both gone unexplained for years."
A 67-year-old man living near where the post was found in Kameido said, "It's a strange feeling, knowing something found right in front of my house is being examined by scholars in a country far away." A 20-year-old university math student said, "Just the possibility of a numbering system is exciting. I hope they publish updates even midway through."
The analysis is expected to take months, and the Center says it will publish interim reports as they come. As previously reported, Lineage 148 sits alongside cases like Lineage 122, whose craftsmanship echoes Lineage 31, "the neighboring world" — a reminder that resemblances in symbols or craftsmanship could eventually reveal relationships between lineages, through a different channel than the Survey Division's windows. Even so, the Center held to the same stance found on the survey page: "Not rushing to connect things is this city's way of doing business."
