H. Beam Piper: OMNILINGUAL: To translate writings, you need a key to the code—and if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years before the first writer of Earth was born ... how could the Martian be translated...?

This short story was first written and published in the year 1957, as part of a collection of short science fiction stories in the collection Astounding Science Fiction. Piper's story is unusual in focusing on the problem of archaeology on an alien culture. How is is possible to decipher writings of an alien race that died out 50,000 years ago? What could we possibly have in common with them? There can be no 'Rosetta Stone' with a shared language so is it impossible? That is the struggle of the protagonist and against all odds she does indeed find a way for our two cultures to meet. An excellent story well written.