John Chadwick's book "The Decipherment of Linear B" first piqued my lifelong curiosity about Cretan scripts. The death of Michael Ventris at such an early age was truly a very sad loss for the study of ancient Mediterranean scripts and languages. But personally the one I REALLY want to see much more progress in is Etruscan. So much is already known about its structure but not the language itself. Hopefully somewhere in Etruria there is a large cache of inscriptions still waiting to be discovered!
My greatest hope is that Emperor Claudius' supposed Etruscan dictionary comes out of the carbonized scrolls in Herculaneum. It's a long shot sure, but man, would that be an incredible find. And maybe it would come with his histories of Etruia and Carthage as well!
I have been following the Linear A question since the mid-1990s. SigLA represents a huge advance of the very thing I was attempting to do on a magnetic dry erase board. There were too many variations and ambiguities to hold in the mind and on paper! I also attempted to trace individual signs through Cretan Hieroglyphic (per CHIC), Linear A Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Cypro-Syllabic. I knew the Linear A grid and transliteration as presented by GORILA, while foundational, had flaws that were serious enough to be a potential impediment to attempts at decipherment. Among these were the scribal and site variations, ligatures, erasures, and misinterpreted signs that were transliterated using the known Linear B values. That is where Dr, Salgarellas paleographic work is key to new discoveries from resulting from refinement of the knowledge base. BTW, and yes, I am on the fence (leaning to slightly not) to whether Phaistos disk is a valid artifact, best to keep this to the side.
Have you seen Peter Revesz's (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) analyses of Linear A and the Phaistos disk? By statistical analyses, he infers that the language encoded by the Phaistos disk is an ancient branch of the Finno-Ugric language family (closer to Hungarian than to Finnish), and that Linear A is a later encoding of the same. He has several videos here on his YT channel (www.youtube.com/@PeterRevesz/videos) discussing his analyses, with links to papers in the show notes. A relevant video: th-cam.com/video/PiLyN9T2stY/w-d-xo.html As I recall, he posits (perhaps in one of his papers) that the original language of both Crete and mainland Greece was this Finno-Ugric language, with what we recognize as ancient Greek later usurping its place, but with some of the earlier vocabulary persisting (often in modified form). But, it's been a while since I went down that rabbit hole, so I could be mis-remembering (this is out of my bailiwick, but I am curious and interested). I am not qualified to assess whether he is "right", but I am fascinated by his approach. If his decoding of the Phaistos disk is reasonably correct, then that would weigh heavily in its favor as a genuine archaeological artifact, rather than a modern contrivance.
@@kevinolson1102maybe he's talking nonsense just to Impress. He hasn't provided a convincing translation of the inscriptions for any of the three objects he dealt with: the ring, the pin, the clay tablet. The cloud, mother earth shine down on me??? What's this? Nonsense. He should be deprived of his post as a professor. Maybe tomorrow a Chinese will appear, inventing that ancient minoans spoke and wrote in Chinese. Would definitevely sound more convincing to me.
So they have found out that linear A is a greek language. That's normal, since they have been able to decipher the phonetic values of most of the characters. Or maybe I haven't understood well? Do they say that linear A was the alphabet of greek language or that they are unsure? I see why they get the frame of the picture but not the whole picture (why they don't get the meaning of all the words). It's because they need the help of greek linguists and classics' scholars, who should be able to understand ancient dialects. And don't insult these people mentionning Revesz. These people are doing a serious job, not playing on syllabes' phonetic values to conform the words to their finnohungric intentions.
@@kelor Depriving someone of his post as a professor because you don't agree with his methods (or his conclusions? - it's not entirely clear to me from your critique) seems a little harsh. Ideally, someone from the field would engage him intellectually (as I noted, I'm no philologist), and we'd all gain some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of his approach. Since most of the extant Linear A texts appear to be accounting lists, it's not surprising that efforts at translating other texts would be a bit bumpy. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I found Revesz's approach interesting. It has historically been very common for outsiders to a field to have novel insights. Many of those may prove wrong (indeed, as does most everything in the sciences, whether hard or soft), but some may show themselves to be useful.
@@kevinolson1102 What he does, is a fraud. The results show that linear A is greek alphabet made for greek language. Ask Mrs Steele. She knows, as Revesz knows too. Therefore anyone claiming the contrary (that it's hettitic, luwian, Semitic, Hungarian, why not philippino too?) is a fraudster. A few scholars admit that it's all greek, but not publicly, not to offend their colleagues. And yet it's them who commit sacrilege against our precious language. Unpunished. That's rape commited in front of our eyes. Rape of history and common sense. On the land of Greece, what would one expect to find, other than greek? Are greeks that idiots? If greek professors claimed that greeks had invaded Hungary in the prehistoric era, would Revesz feel happy about it or would he become furious, or even laugh at such nonsense?
Linear A predates any concept of Greek or Hellenic civilization and as a major influence on Linear B one could easily argue Greek and Hellenic are late Cretan or Cycladic.
@@mrjones2721 Minoan language is unknown therefore one couldn't prove/disprove your statement. Linear B is decendant from Creatan Linear A therefore "Greek" writing is a descendant of Createan Linear A.
@@bluelithium9808 We can read Linear A inscriptions, we just don’t know what they mean. Seeing the sounds and structure of the language, we know that the language of Linear A was not related to the language of Linear B.
It is very difficult to understand. Your hesitation, tour coff and the lack of clarity on the speech makes this very difficult to understand and follow. You have to improve on your presentations and any university should have a training course on oratory and effective communication. I hope you have a transcription of this presentation.
John Chadwick's book "The Decipherment of Linear B" first piqued my lifelong curiosity about Cretan scripts. The death of Michael Ventris at such an early age was truly a very sad loss for the study of ancient Mediterranean scripts and languages. But personally the one I REALLY want to see much more progress in is Etruscan. So much is already known about its structure but not the language itself. Hopefully somewhere in Etruria there is a large cache of inscriptions still waiting to be discovered!
My greatest hope is that Emperor Claudius' supposed Etruscan dictionary comes out of the carbonized scrolls in Herculaneum. It's a long shot sure, but man, would that be an incredible find. And maybe it would come with his histories of Etruia and Carthage as well!
Thank you. The work done is amazing.
Thank you very much for this concise and clear summary of your important scientific work
I have been following the Linear A question since the mid-1990s. SigLA represents a huge advance of the very thing I was attempting to do on a magnetic dry erase board. There were too many variations and ambiguities to hold in the mind and on paper! I also attempted to trace individual signs through Cretan Hieroglyphic (per CHIC), Linear A Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Cypro-Syllabic. I knew the Linear A grid and transliteration as presented by GORILA, while foundational, had flaws that were serious enough to be a potential impediment to attempts at decipherment. Among these were the scribal and site variations, ligatures, erasures, and misinterpreted signs that were transliterated using the known Linear B values. That is where Dr, Salgarellas paleographic work is key to new discoveries from resulting from refinement of the knowledge base. BTW, and yes, I am on the fence (leaning to slightly not) to whether Phaistos disk is a valid artifact, best to keep this to the side.
Have you seen Peter Revesz's (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) analyses of Linear A and the Phaistos disk?
By statistical analyses, he infers that the language encoded by the Phaistos disk is an ancient branch of the Finno-Ugric language family (closer to Hungarian than to Finnish), and that Linear A is a later encoding of the same. He has several videos here on his YT channel (www.youtube.com/@PeterRevesz/videos) discussing his analyses, with links to papers in the show notes. A relevant video: th-cam.com/video/PiLyN9T2stY/w-d-xo.html
As I recall, he posits (perhaps in one of his papers) that the original language of both Crete and mainland Greece was this Finno-Ugric language, with what we recognize as ancient Greek later usurping its place, but with some of the earlier vocabulary persisting (often in modified form). But, it's been a while since I went down that rabbit hole, so I could be mis-remembering (this is out of my bailiwick, but I am curious and interested).
I am not qualified to assess whether he is "right", but I am fascinated by his approach. If his decoding of the Phaistos disk is reasonably correct, then that would weigh heavily in its favor as a genuine archaeological artifact, rather than a modern contrivance.
@@kevinolson1102maybe he's talking nonsense just to Impress. He hasn't provided a convincing translation of the inscriptions for any of the three objects he dealt with: the ring, the pin, the clay tablet. The cloud, mother earth shine down on me??? What's this? Nonsense. He should be deprived of his post as a professor. Maybe tomorrow a Chinese will appear, inventing that ancient minoans spoke and wrote in Chinese. Would definitevely sound more convincing to me.
So they have found out that linear A is a greek language. That's normal, since they have been able to decipher the phonetic values of most of the characters. Or maybe I haven't understood well? Do they say that linear A was the alphabet of greek language or that they are unsure? I see why they get the frame of the picture but not the whole picture (why they don't get the meaning of all the words). It's because they need the help of greek linguists and classics' scholars, who should be able to understand ancient dialects. And don't insult these people mentionning Revesz. These people are doing a serious job, not playing on syllabes' phonetic values to conform the words to their finnohungric intentions.
@@kelor Depriving someone of his post as a professor because you don't agree with his methods (or his conclusions? - it's not entirely clear to me from your critique) seems a little harsh. Ideally, someone from the field would engage him intellectually (as I noted, I'm no philologist), and we'd all gain some insight into the strengths and weaknesses of his approach.
Since most of the extant Linear A texts appear to be accounting lists, it's not surprising that efforts at translating other texts would be a bit bumpy.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I found Revesz's approach interesting. It has historically been very common for outsiders to a field to have novel insights. Many of those may prove wrong (indeed, as does most everything in the sciences, whether hard or soft), but some may show themselves to be useful.
@@kevinolson1102
What he does, is a fraud. The results show that linear A is greek alphabet made for greek language. Ask Mrs Steele. She knows, as Revesz knows too. Therefore anyone claiming the contrary (that it's hettitic, luwian, Semitic, Hungarian, why not philippino too?) is a fraudster. A few scholars admit that it's all greek, but not publicly, not to offend their colleagues. And yet it's them who commit sacrilege against our precious language. Unpunished. That's rape commited in front of our eyes. Rape of history and common sense. On the land of Greece, what would one expect to find, other than greek? Are greeks that idiots? If greek professors claimed that greeks had invaded Hungary in the prehistoric era, would Revesz feel happy about it or would he become furious, or even laugh at such nonsense?
Is it possible to obtain statistics of the signs in SigLA ?(e.g. a priori and conditional probabilities for nearest neighbor pairs)
Wonderful!
Thanks!
No problem, we hope you liked the webinar :)
Linear A predates any concept of Greek or Hellenic civilization and as a major influence on Linear B one could easily argue Greek and Hellenic are late Cretan or Cycladic.
If Greek came from Minoan, we’d be able to see the relationship between the languages.
@@mrjones2721 Minoan language is unknown therefore one couldn't prove/disprove your statement. Linear B is decendant from Creatan Linear A therefore "Greek" writing is a descendant of Createan Linear A.
@@bluelithium9808 We can read Linear A inscriptions, we just don’t know what they mean. Seeing the sounds and structure of the language, we know that the language of Linear A was not related to the language of Linear B.
@@mrjones2721 nope, very little of linear a had been attached to any connection and it remains nearly totally undeciphered.
@@bluelithium9808 That’s flatly incorrect. Please read a basic article on Linear A. Scholars have been able to sound out Linear A words since 1953.
It is very difficult to understand. Your hesitation, tour coff and the lack of clarity on the speech makes this very difficult to understand and follow. You have to improve on your presentations and any university should have a training course on oratory and effective communication. I hope you have a transcription of this presentation.
Linear A is african in orgin.we have always known that.
@@MoneyB-r2y We have not. No serious scholars accept that idea, and DNA evidence contradicts it.
Who is we?