German Scientists: Europe's Oldest Script Found In Bulgaria (Minoan)

Sofia News Agency ^ | 5-18-2005

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091680/posts?page=15#15

[FastCoyote]

I'm not sure what the big deal is. I've been writing Cretin script my entire life.

[Fedora]

Thanks!--I figured you could find it :-)

[SunkenCiv]

"How would you know if the decipherment is accurate?"

The Ventris decipherment was rejected (actually, before it was made) by Arthur Evans' followers. Evans had insisted that the Minoans hadn't been Greek speakers, and that their written language would bear that out. Blegen went to Pylos hoping to find an archive and found one. Evans' followers immediately claimed the tablets had originated on Crete, but had been carried off by the conquering Greeks.

Then Blegen et applied Ventris' decipherment to the Pylos tablets. :')

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1202723/posts?page=12#12

[monkey]

Right; I was referring to Linear A, or any other script where the language is unknown. (A later form of) the underlying language must still be spoken for a decipherment of the written language; Greek for Linear B; Coptic for Egyptian glyphs; a number of Mayan languages are still spoken.

My point is that it is difficult to verify decipherment; there are always issues associated with decipherments, and no decipherment is complete. It's possible to conceive of scripts being deciphered without the spoken language being known, but it would make verification that much more difficult - really impossible by today's standards.

[SunkenCiv]

(A later form of) the underlying language must still be spoken for a decipherment of the written language

OTOH, Sumerian is a completely dead language. Even the existence of that people was unsuspected. Cuneiform had however been adapted for use by quite a number of languages, and had itself been cracked using Akkadian-era Assyrian texts; Assyrian being from the Semitic family of languages, modern versions being still spoken.

Unknown languages written in cuneiform can be pronounced; in at least one case, an otherwise unknown language, found on a single tablet in the Amarna archive, was deciphered using other Amarna tablets. Could be the best example of the cracking of a dead language using a very small body of extant texts.

[SunkenCiv]

missed one:

Quarry, Setting and Team Marks: The Carian Connection
University of Leiden (Netherlands) | 1998 | (about) Sheldon Lee Gosline
Posted on 10/08/2004 3:20:42 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1239452/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Crete: isle of the dead?
by Philip Coppens

Linear A and B are two scripts of Crete. The newer Linear B was deciphered in 1953 by Michael Ventras and turned out to be Greek. In 1971, Dutch archaeologist and historian Jan Best claimed he had deciphered Linear A and had found a connection between Minoan Crete and the Hyksos. Linear A, he argued, was Semitic, related to the languages of Ugarit and Alalach in Syria.

see also messaage 32.

[SuziQ]

How on earth did the Minoan tablet get to Bulgaria?

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

[mad_as_he$$]

Interesting Crete tie in. Atlantis?

[mad_as_he$$]

“...the Egyptian tourist board”

If Hawas is involved it requires a truck load of salt.

[mad_as_he$$]

Did you find any new info on this find. I briefly googled it but nothing jumped out except this:

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/danube-valley-civilisation-script-oldest-writing-world-001343

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 05/19/2005. A re-ping. Thanks blam.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks mad_as_he$$, I haven't, but otoh, I didn't remember giving this the old reping three years ago, either. :^)

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.