Linear B

They each had a different writing system.

The Minoans had a system that we now call Linear A, and the Mycenaeans had a system that we call Linear B.

Catchy.

Yeah.

Well, we have actually figured out how to read Linear B from the Mycenaeans, but we still [laughs] haven't figured out Linear A.

Whoa.

So we don't know what anything written in Linear A actually says?

Sarah, I think this one's mostly for you.

What the heck is linear B, and why do some of the letters look like Hebrew?

Oh, cool.

I get to take the next 15 minutes off.

She has now two years in a row been given the sharp sword and we were not.

And that's on purpose.

um okay linear b

thank you

A similar text to the seal stones, but far more advanced.

Evans called it Linear B.

It's on a clay tablet, so it's not inscribed in stone.

This indicates that there is a sort of a everyday use of language.

So it absolutely unequivocally connects the culture of, that Evans is digging at Knossos with what Schliemann has found at Mycenae.

[Instrumental music playing] The pottery was the same style as the Mycenaean finds on the mainland, and dated to roughly 1400 BC.

Linear B was at least 900 years older than the writing of classical Greece.

For Evans, this was proof the Mycenaeans on Crete had invented Europe's high culture, not the more recent classical Greeks.

If it were influenced by Europeans, and we could figure that out by either having a larger sample size or something a little bit more definitive, I think it would really help us put our finger on the pulse of this culture because, I mean, we know historically translation efforts are much more productive when we can tie something to a base language.

Like Linear B we could decode because researchers were able to tie it to, I think, like, an archaic Greek language.

And I don't know.

That, even if it ends up being super boring and about some farming practice-

We see the sudden disappearance of entire writing systems.

The Mycenaeans in Greece used a complex script called Linear B to run their palatial economies.

When the palaces burned around 1200 BC, Linear B just vanished.

The society literally lost the ability to read and write.

They just forgot.

But they're actually wrong.

In the 1950s, scholars finally cracked an ancient script called Linear B, which was the writing of the Mycenaeans from the Bronze Age Greeks.

This is basically like the world of the Trojan War.

And on clay tablets from the Palace of Pylos, as well as from the island of Crete, dating back both of them to roughly like 1300 BC, there's a name written there, and it's his name.

One tablet even recorded him getting an offering of honey right next to Zeus.

Now, these clay tablets, by the way, are fascinating.

Linear B in particular is crazy, and you should take a look at it.

It's not like a ancient sort of Bible.