Posted on 05/19/2005 2:56:33 PM PDT by blam
German Scientists: Europe's Oldest Script Found in Bulgaria
Lifestyle: 18 May 2005, Wednesday.
Ancient tablets found in South Bulgaria are written in the oldest European script found ever, German scientists say.
The tablets, unearthed near the Southern town of Kardzhali, are over 35-centuries old, and bear the ancient script of the Cretan (Minoan) civilization, according to scientists from the University of Heidelberg, who examined the foundings. This is the Cretan writing, also known as Linear A script, which dates back to XV-XIV century B.C.
The discovery proves the theory of the Bulgarian archaeologists that the script on the foundings is one of the oldest known to humankind, the archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov announced Wednesday.
Ovcharov, who is heading the archaeological expedition in the ancient Perperikon complex near Kardzhali, called the discovery "revolutionary". It throws a completely different light on Bulgaria's history, he said in an interview for the National Television.
I'm not sure what the big deal is. I've been writing Cretin script my entire life.
Thanks!--I figured you could find it :-)
"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
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.
(A later form of) the underlying language must still be spoken for a decipherment of the written languageOTOH, 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.
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
see also messaage 32.Crete: isle of the dead?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.
by Philip Coppens
How on earth did the Minoan tablet get to Bulgaria?
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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Interesting Crete tie in. Atlantis?
“...the Egyptian tourist board”
If Hawas is involved it requires a truck load of salt.
Did you find any new info on this find. I briefly googled it but nothing jumped out except this:
Note: this topic is from . A re-ping. Thanks blam.
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.
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