Talk:Linear A

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 8 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): L.anny.C.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

DNA could help?
Are there bones synchronic with the Minoan ruins and Linear A? In which case, the DNA of such bones may show us where the Minoans came from, and thus indicate a language or parent language for Linear A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.223.187.157 (talk) 10:21, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

The analysis of a small number of Bronze Age DNA samples from Greece and Crete was published by Lazarides et al. 'Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans' in Nature in 2017. They concluded that "Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean,and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus and Iran", so nothing surprising. European Prehistorian (talk) 19:21, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The Minoans lack steppes DNA, so their pre Mycenaean Greek language is unlikely to be Indo-European. It is more likely another Anatolian descendant. Metta79 (talk) 12:27, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Problem with the dates
This article lists the dates for Linear A from 2500 BCE to 1450 BCE. However, the source used (Haarmann, H. The Danube Script and Other Ancient Writing Systems:A Typology of Distinctive Features. J. of Archaeomythology 4,1:12-46) uses the term "Cretan Linear A" conflating both, the Cretan hieroglyphs and Linear A.

All other sources date Linear A from 1850 BCE or 1800 BCE. For example:

"Linear A is attested in Crete and on some Aegean islands from approximately 1850 bc to 1400 bc."

"The first linear script, Linear A, dates from about 1700 B.C. and was also partly pictorial in nature. It appears on clay tablets written between 1750 B.C. and 1400 B.C. and has been classified as a West Semitic script."

"Linear A was in use in Phaistos as early as 1850 B.C., long before the disappearance of the first script [Cretan hieroglyphs]; but the bulk of the surviving texts date from the destruction of the palaces at the end of LM Ib (around 1450 B.C.) with a smaller number assignable to MM III and none securely dated after 1400 B.C.

Even the Wikipedia article on Cretan hieroglyphs states:

"Cretan hieroglyphs are undeciphered hieroglyphs found on artefacts[sic] of early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. It predates Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history."

However, the date range for the Cretan hieroglyphs is given as 2100-1700 BC. This error causes both chronologies of Linear A and Linear B on Wikipedia to be completely out of range when compared to the scholarly versions.

Also note in the Linear B article, the chronology has Cretan hieroglyphs comprising the period only from 1625 BCE(?) to 1500 BCE. No scholarly source places the Cretan hieroglyphs that late, and no scholarly source places Linear A as early as 2500 BCE. Both articles, Linear A and Linear B, are in sore need of correction. 96.50.8.92 (talk) 22:29, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah, and now the article even claims that Linear A was used from 2500 BCE. This seems wholly idiosyncratic and cannot be sustained. I'll change the early dates to 1800 BCE. —Pinnerup (talk) 09:44, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Greek Archeology & Art Homework
I really hope I'm doing this right. I am a college sophomore in no way an expert on anything to do with Wikipedia or Linear A. But, upon review of the article these are the improvements that I can see can be made with the page.

At first read through, I am impressed by the detail and thoroughness of the wikipedia page. If I were first researching Greek early writing styles, and wanted to familiarize myself with Linear A, I would trust the accuracy of the information presented to me. The article is setup in an organized way that is easy to follow. It is helpful in that it starts with a brief interdiction, using language that is easy to follow, before starts with an overview before diverging into subsections. I feel that everything in the article is relevant to Linear A. The one suggestion of improvement I would make is the inclusion of random “fun-facts” throughout, such as including in the script section that “an interesting feature is that of how numbers are included in the script. The highest number that has been recorded is 3000…”. There are a few of these details that seem unnecessary to the main point.

While the article was well organized, however one point of distraction was the variety of different sub-organization tools under the “Theories of deciperment section”. Here, information was organized in summaries, by quoting chunks of text, or in bullet points. The different methods of organizing text weren't visually pleasing and was confusing to follow. My other suggestion in organization is to bring the Discovery section to before the Corpus section. To me, it makes more sense to talk about the original discovery of Linear A before then proceeding to talk about other places the language has been found.

As far as I can tell all of the claims seemed neutral. In my read through certain subtopics received far more attention than others. The discovery of Linear A was a total of three sentances, while theories of theories of decipherment was eight paragraphs. If I were to edit this page I would add more detail to the discovery section and summarize the different theories of decipherment into a few paragraphs, rather than give each theory their own paragraph. Another section that seemed to be missing was a history on Linear A. While it is not deciphered, and we don’t know its use, it would have been helpful to place Linear A within its historical context. This information could be placed in the beginning with the general overview of Linear A. Linear A is a topic discussed alot within my class so I came in with prior knowledge. However to someone not knowing anything about Ancient Greece from c. 2500-1400 B.C.E, then they wouldn’t know where to pinpoint what society looked like when Linear A was being used.

The links to the citations I clicked on work. Overall, the citations seem to come from reputable sources including books and academic journals. There are also a multitude of sources used, so we know information collected is from a variety of viewpoints. The one imporvement the article could make are there are a few spots were a distinct fact was placed with no citation. Such as with the highest number being 3000 quote in the Script section.

Looking at the talk page I saw discussion on what sections were being underrepresented (which agreed with my perspective). There was also a lot of talk trying to confirm is certain facts were 100% accurate. A lot of this had to do with Theories of Decipherment, and which theories were still being considered and which ones proven wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Char flower (talk • contribs) 23:26, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Actually, it is deciphered.
Hello,

After the reading of the books about minoan script written bij Peter G. van Soesbergen, I am pretty sure he deciphered a Huge part of the minoan linear a. The website about his books is http://www.minoanscript.nl

Kind regards, Jodocus — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.167.198.196 (talk) 17:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiLyN9T2stY&feature=youtu.be deciphering some Linear A texts by Peter Revesz — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A03F:C30A:1F00:7842:F540:954E:F14B (talk) 12:24, 5 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Linear B is considered deciphered, even though there are some unknown characters. Linear A is considered undeciphered; some of it is, but much of it isn't. It might be a matter of the meanings of characters and words. Linear B is written in an ancient form of Greek, which is much more known about than the Minoan of Linear A. 64.124.38.140 (talk) 19:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Unicode Linear A
The first question that occurred to me when I saw the section on Unicode was 'why??' I don't have an answer, and it isn't addressed in the text, but I thought I'd ask here if anyone has some idea why someone would add a long dead, undeciphered script to a modern character set standard. just for convenience among researchers?? Beergeekjoey (talk) 20:28, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The goal of Unicode is to provide a unique number for every character including historical characters. – Þjarkur (talk) 20:40, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

t/d
In the context of whether there was a voicing distinction in the language behind Linear A, the article reads "The distinction t / d reflected in the Linear A, Linear B and Cypriot is an example of speech stops" and cites an article. I'm a linguist, and I can't figure out what is being said here. I looked the article cited up in the Wayback machine, but I could not see that it spoke to this issue at all. At any rate, it's *possible* that the text in this Wikipedia article is saying that /t/ and /d/ are stops, which is true (although whether the corresponding Linear A symbols represent these sounds is perhaps harder to determine, I assume this is relying on Linear A/ Greek). But that doesn't seem terribly relevant, unless I'm missing s.t. Mcswell (talk) 04:58, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Good observation, the passage was inserted here. Since it is a close-to-gibberish statement with a reference that does not back up whatever is meant by the statement, I'll delete it. The meaningful part of it (the partially defective coding of voice contrasts) is mentioned in the page Linear B anyway. Next time you find stuff like this, just be WP:BOLD and tag or remove it. Thanks for having a closer look at this page! –Austronesier (talk) 09:59, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree, the removed fragment is close to incomprehensible.--Bob not snob (talk) 10:02, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Ugric
While we're at it, yesterday an edit-warring IP was unhappy with 's removal of the "Ugric" section, which is based on two non-RS published in predatory journals (cf page history). Such sources may be included (but even then only with caution) if they have been cited by scholars in peer-reviewed non-predatory journals (thus reliable sources), which may "heal" their default status as non-RS. I cannot see that this is the case with these two fringe papers. –Austronesier (talk) 10:13, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree, removed, .--Bob not snob (talk) 10:53, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

The "A distinct, otherwise unknown branch of Indo-European" Section
I would like to seriously condense this section as it hinges exclusively on one scholar's unsupported, personal interpretation of the script, using Linear B values for Linear A -- a method referred to in this Wikipedia article as resulting in a text "[no] scholar can read." While I would like to remove the section entirely, as it's based on a claim of decipherment of the Linear A script (along with numerous fringe beliefs, e.g. PIE had already begun to disintegrate prior to 10,000BCE(1)(2)(3)), the theory is from a peer-reviewed source, and therefore presumably meets the criteria for inclusion on the page. The quote, however, does not; it is from a non-peer-reviewed newspaper(?) article, elementary in its description of Indo-European, and fraught with inconsistencies and/or flat-out contradictory assertions ("In the Minoan language (Linear A), there are no purely Greek words, as is the case in Mycenaean Linear B" (?!)). While the medium of a newspaper article is admittedly most conducive to elementary or introductory explanations of any material, there is a reason such sources do not quite meet WP requirements for inclusion. I would recommend at the very least removing the quote, and replacing it with something more appropriate from one of the author's peer-reviewed sources. The reason I believe that removing the entire section may still be warranted is that once all the aforementioned issues are dealt with, it leaves little of substance in the sub-section in question.

Also, both footnotes associated with the author's works: 33 and 34, are dead links, leading to pages with page not found errors. I would also suggest removing the entire Indo-Iranian section as it's also just based on bad science (which is thankfully explained), but that's a different story.

(1) Ringe, D. and Anthony, D., 2015. The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives.

(2) Gamkrelidze,T.V., & Ivanov, V., 1995. . Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture.

(3)Renfrew, C., 1987. Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. (hilariously, Owens actually cites this specific article, and then seemingly proceeds to completely disregard its contents even though the time-depth contained within is probably closest to his ridiculous one)

Vindafarna (talk) 06:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree 100%, go ahead and WP:boldly change what needs to be changed. –Austronesier (talk) 09:42, 9 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Owens' work is legitimate and well-studied. It's quite common for authors to cite articles in on section approvingly and disagree with their other sections. CessnaMan1989 (talk) 21:40, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Display problem!
I cannot see the Glyph column in "Proposed values of fraction glyphs". What character set should I use? Mazarin07 (talk) 07:49, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You'll need a Unicode Linear A font installed to see those characters properly. DRMcCreedy (talk) 15:48, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Opening Image
Does anyone know where that first image is from? I checked the cited source (which is available on IA) but it doesn't match. AtticEdit (talk) 13:12, 18 January 2022 (GMT+13)
 * Check the online corpus (cannot add the link as the English Wikipedia blocks it, but you can check it in the references on the Russian version of the article). It is a golden ring from Mavro Spilio. Dmitri Lytov (talk) 21:33, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Corpus
I tidied up and updated the article but it needs work on what the current Linear A inscriptions are (and what they are on). Seriously, I thought things were bad in the cuneiform world but given there are only a few hundred inscriptions and maybe a few thousand total glyphs in existance its amazing how underpublished and poorly published the Linear A corpus is. This is a long winded way of asking if someone more up to date on things Minoan than I am could fix this up. ThanksPloversegg (talk) 22:08, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Images for Fractions
It would be cool if there were SVG files for the fraction glyphs like there are for the common glyphs. I looked at the unicode and they are VERY simple. Of course I have No Idea how to do this but maybe someone smarter than I am can do it.Ploversegg (talk) 22:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Someone did this, which is cool.Ploversegg (talk) 22:17, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

LIbation Formulas
I see that someone did a draft article on Libation Formulas Draft:Libation Formula which was soundly rejected by the PTB. Maybe some of it could be incorporated into this article.Ploversegg (talk) 17:58, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
 * It looks like the main intent of the draft was to promote a preprint article that was rejected for inclusion here in this article. But of course, quality content that can be supported with reliable sources is a welcome addition here. –Austronesier (talk) 19:31, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for looking at it.Ploversegg (talk) 20:49, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Method of equivalent hieroglyphs
Hi,

There is a new method for translating based on Egyptian hieratics: https://nantt44.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/chapter-xv-charmuthas-betius-minoan-theology-through-linear-a/

According to this method, PO-NI-ZA the last three symbols of the historical coin KO ZF2 would give the Immortal lord of Sky, Ba'al Shamin. We can also find the main gods and goddesses of the Minoans. These hieroglyphs could thus be the key to decipher the Linear A of the Cretans. Lepoivre Bertrand (talk) 20:19, 30 August 2022 (UTC)


 * This appears to just be someone's blog, not a reliable source. – Scyrme (talk) 21:15, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Chronology
Almost everything I've read had Linear A beginning c. 1800 BC. The Minoan civilization article (and another paper I saw) says 2500 BC based on one paper. I read that paper (Haarman 2008) and it quotes no source for that claim. What it does do is move Middle Minoan IIB back to 2500 BC. Odd. So I disbelieve and plan to change the Minoan article unless someone has a better idea.Ploversegg (talk) 04:31, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Agree. ~1800 BCE is what you find most sources, including the ones cited in this article. And even if there is a source that explicitly pushes the date of the earliest attestations of Linear A back to 2500 BCE (and not just its cultural horizon), we should mention it only here as an outlier proposal, but not in Minoan civilization. –Austronesier (talk) 21:44, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I think, after consideration, that the author was trying to link Linear A to the Danube Script and needed to cook the dating to make that even remotely work.Ploversegg (talk) 21:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

The language of Linear A is a close relative of Hattic
This point should be marked in the “Other languages” section and should not be deleted. The idea that the language of Linear A is related to Hattic is much more realistic than any other hypothesis about the language of Linear A.

Alexander Akulov and Peter Schrijver have independently come to the conclusion that the language of Linear A is a quite close relative of Hattic.

Akulov, A. 2021. The deciphering of the Linear A tablet Malia 10. Cultural Anthropology and Ethnosemiotics, Vol. 7, № 3; pp.: 8 - 18

The Linear A tablet Malia 10 has inscriptions on four sides of six. Sides A and B have relatively well-preserved inscriptions containing syllabograms, logograms depicting different vessels, and numerals. Previously it was shown that Minoan and Hattic are rather close, so phrases from the tablet can be decoded through Hattic. The component tew from the phrase dupitewa from side B correlates with Hattic tepušne/tewušne "libation". The -a ending correlates with Hattic imperative -a. The component -u- in the syllable du correlates with Hattic marker of 2sgsb -u- / un-. The syllable pi correlates with Hattic marker of plural object -p-. The phrase ru from the side A correlates with Hattic verb lu "to be able". https://www.academia.edu/53367491/The_deciphering_of_the_Linear_A_tablet_Malia_10

Schrijver, P. 2019. Talking Neolithic: the case for Hatto-Minoan and its relationship to Sumerian, Proceedings of the workshop on Indo-European origins held at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, December 2-3, 2013

The word sarja, followed by a logogram/determinative depicting human being, on the Linear A tablet Haghia Triada 102 correlates with Hattic word zariu meaning “human being”. https://www.academia.edu/38376555/Talking_Neolithic_the_case_for_Hatto_Minoan_and_its_relationship_to_Sumerian Pepe mantani (talk) 22:47, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * For background Hattic language and Minoan language. Ploversegg (talk) 23:25, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Is this Peter Schrijver the same as Peter Schrijver? Seems a bit out of his field if so. – Scyrme (talk) 02:31, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yep, Peter Schrijver Pepe mantani (talk) 02:38, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It's looks like they already did "explain the source on the talk page" (above, posted before your revert). I don't know whether these sources are credible or whether mentioning them would be undue, but your edit summary seems unclear and possibly unfair. – Scyrme (talk) 01:56, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I can see now. There wasn't any explanation on the edit tags, such as 'see talk' so I assumed it was a simple wp:BRD issue. All good now, thanks for reverting. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 03:00, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * As an aside, the 1st papers is at (wordpress) and the 2nd paper is available at .Ploversegg (talk) 03:08, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What on earth are you doing? Don't revert 's contributions without a proper explaination. –Austronesier (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Dolkos
I reverted this edit today and the IP who made it has left a polite message on my talk. I thought it best to open a discussion here. There were various problems with the edit as it was, but at the heart of it there is a paper by Dolkos, which may be interesting. . My reason for reverting it all, however, is that the paper is a primary source, and if Dolkos is worth a mention, it would be better if we took it from a secondary source. Nevertheless these types of articles often end up referring to such primary sources in places, so it would be a matter of deciding how. The paper is about attempts to interpret messages in two engravings. There is a question as to how due this is to the article as a whole. Additionally the edit contained external links in the body - we don't do that. There were some spelling errors, but we can fix those easily. The links to a wordpress site were also self published sources - we can't use those for verifiability. So the question is whether there is anything we can say about Dolkos that does not lend undue weight to one primary source. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 18:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Article
I poked at it a bit and hopefully improved it here and there (I thought about merging the sfns into inline refs to make it more maintainable but was too lazy, I also wanted to tighten up the underlying language part a bit more but had squeezed it as hard as I dared).

The one thing I am not happy with was the new Decipherment section. For the earlier work it is "challenging" to compress maybe 130 years of science (with a healthy mix of speculation and wishful thinking) into a couple paragraphs. And the current (leading edge) work does not impress me, though its good to see people thinking outside the usual box, so that could be better as well. If anyone feels up to that task it would be cool.Ploversegg (talk) 01:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I like what you've done with the place! :) With these kinds of articles, I don't think it's really necessary to mention all the research and speculation, and in fact that can be counterproductive. My recommendation would be to trumpet the fact that it's undeciphered (for drive-by readers) and to clearly lay out the knowns and unknowns (for casual readers), and just enough detail about how we know what we know to satisfy someone who's reading a bit more seriously. I can attempt this at some point when I have time and energy, but it won't be soon.  Botterweg14  (talk)  02:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll probably wander away from LA now, maybe create another archaeological site article as a palette cleanser. If someone else hasn't stepped up by the time I come this way again I'll finish up that section. :-) Ploversegg (talk) 15:40, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree this is great work, but also that we need to do some pruning per WP:DUEWEIGHT. Low or zero impact proposals (measured by how often they are cited in secondary sources) should better be kept out. –Austronesier (talk) 19:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Usually I do a pass for that sort of thing when I finish but the article wasn't "finished" in my mind I so I had not. I will say, and yes this is a philosophical point, I resist that notion of overweighting "secondary sources" in history/archaeology or science type articles. Leaning on secondary sources in other area, say if you are doing an article on a rock band, makes sense but in these field the sources ARE the primary sources. Wait, how did I get up on my soap box? :-) Anyway, I agree that there is some undersupported speculation in the article, especially in the underlying language section. Ploversegg (talk) 20:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No, no, not secondary sources in the sense of research reviews, but reliable sources of decent quality that mention the primary source. These sources of course can well be primary sources themselves, but they document the scholarly resonance that the primary source we want to cite actually has received. My creed goes: if hardly any decent other source has talked about a piece of research, why should we do so?
 * In my own field (historical linguistics) you have to wait for genuine secondary sources (like research reviews or handbooks) in 20 year-intervals, so I go by the same principle in articles about linguistic classification and subgrouping. –Austronesier (talk) 20:46, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Very true. In archaeology the review articles are often much longer and more informative the original work.Ploversegg (talk) 20:49, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm actually gonna stick up for handbook articles (and their kin) as sources. In my experience, they make it so much easier to write cohesive articles, i.e. ones that state what's known in wikivoice and summarize the arguments for different positions where there's genuine disagreement. I'm often reluctant to use regular journal articles to support those kinds of claims, and the alternative is to write "Jones (1995) claims bladibla. Dekker (2001) claims foo. Xiang (2003) claims fnord" which (imo) is suboptimal unless the literature is really just a sea of incommensurate or hard-to-reconcile claims.


 * FWIW, there is this and also this handbook article on Linear A, though it doesn't focus on decipherment in particular. Botterweg14  (talk)  22:12, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Tertiary sources?!?! Heavens for-fend. I guess I should stop cleaning out all that old 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica crud or mocking people who try to ref the "encyclopedia iranica"! :-) Ok, more seriously I have no objection to that IF the handbook type is clear where they got the info from. I meant to add that even a few years ago I would have disagreed with you but primary sources ain't what they used to be. With predatory publishing, "special issues" etc, you can get ANYTHING published and it will look all nice and proper to the unobservant. Ploversegg (talk) 22:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Hahahaha I do try to aim for recent and high quality ones (and the ones I linked would certainly qualify). Botterweg14  (talk)  23:25, 29 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Just thought I'd give and  (or anyone else reading this) a heads up that I'm gradually working on a potential rewrite in my sandbox. What I have is far from camera-ready, but you're welcome to edit there or discuss here.  Botterweg14  (talk)  17:55, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Cool. I won't hover over your shoulder but feel free to say if you want me to poke at some small point or other. And is the Minoan Language an isolate? Do seem to be a suspicious number of "isolates" banging around in that period, Sumerian, Elamite, etc.Ploversegg (talk) 02:00, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Wow, I took a quick peek at Minoan language there is a whole Keftiu/Caphtor thing going which I find pretty odd. That either gets a small mention in the LA article or (I think), should be exorcised from the Minoan language article before it confuses someone. :-) Ploversegg (talk) 04:34, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that we should tranfer the Keftiu piece in Minoan language to Caphtor, and change the redirect target of Keftiu language accordingly. A mention in Linear A only is due if the Keftiu material ever has played a role in one of the attempts to decipher Linear A or to identify the language written in it. –Austronesier (talk) 12:02, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Syllabograms and ideograms
A table of the signs with assumed syllabic values can easily be added, just as the Linear B article contains one. There seems to be broad agreement about the sound value of numerous syllabograms that are shared with Linear B: see e.g. here, p. 319 (with references) and here, p. 5. Some ideograms are the same as in Linear B, too (a number are identified even in the Unicode Standard document), and could be listed just as they are listed in the Linear B article. The main obstacles to proper 'decipherment' seem to be the unknown logograms and the fact that the language apparently isn't sufficiently closely related to any known language to make it easy to understand or even classify. Anyway, the agnosticism maintained by this article about the sound value of the signs seems peculiar and excessive. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 00:11, 27 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Assuming is not the same as Knowing. Language glyphs can and have been re-used with different meaning and sounds. There appears to have been at least a half century lapse between the end of Linear A and Linear B. Certainly the designers of Linear B used some of the Linear A glyphs they found lying around. Any notion that those glyphs have the same sound or the same meaning is an Assumption. If you substitute the Linear B sounds in Linear A texts AFAIK you get gibberish. Maybe some are the same, maybe not. That is not Known. Certainly Linear B is built on Mycenae Greek. Its pretty certain that Linear A is not.
 * I looked at those references. One is built on the idea that the underlying language of Linear A was Hurrian which seems unlikely. The other merely says that in some specific cases in some specific circumstances a glyph may have the same meaning in Linear A and Linear B. That is all.
 * How many Assumptions were made made for Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Linear B which looked reasonable at the time but turned out in retrospect to be tragically wrong? Many.Ploversegg (talk) 02:03, 27 March 2024 (UTC)


 * On the contrary, all 'knowing' is nothing but assuming - everything can turn out to be wrong in retrospect, and all we can do is retell what scholars believe at present, this is what Wikipedia's job is per WP:NPOV and WP:V. If we had been writing Wikipedia in the 19th century, we would have and should have endorsed the misconceptions that were dominant at among scholars at that the time. We have no right to be more sceptical than the experts are, that would be WP:Original Research. As for the references, you clearly haven't 'looked' at them well enough. The first reference doesn't just say that 'in some specific cases in some specific circumstances a glyph may have the same meaning in Linear A and Linear B'. It presents a complete syllabary on p. 319, and it sources it to two other publications by leading experts dealing with this issue, Younger and Davis. The second reference also contains such a syllabary, and that syllabary isn't 'built on on the idea that the underlying language is Hurrian' - it's the other way around, the arguments that the language is Hurrian are built on readings using a syllabary and interpretations of logograms deduced from Linear B, which just goes to show that this scholar, too, subscribes to these same interpretations. You don't have to accept that the language is Hurrian to accept the syllabary and the logograms. Peter Schrijver's article, which this Wikipedia article cites, makes a completely different case, namely that the language is Hattic, but it also starts from the same principle of reading syllabograms and logograms as in Linear B (p. 341-342). All of this just goes to show that pretty much everybody working with Linear A shares the idea that the syllabograms and logograms stand for roughly the same things as their counterparts in Linear B (another proof of the same: : 'Linear B took most of its signs from Linear A, and because we can read Linear B, we can actually pronounce Linear A inscriptions'). Another recent book, by Ester Salgarella, goes even further in the same direction, basically arguing that 'Linear A' and 'Linear B' are essentially the same script in two stages of its development; and given how many of the signs are the same, this doesn't seem unreasonable. What we see here is a scholarly consensus if there ever was one, and Wikipedia is supposed to reflect the scholarly consensus.--62.73.69.121 (talk) 21:29, 28 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm a little squeamish about including a table that presents the presumed values in Wikivoice. But FWIW, I have an unfinished rewrite waiting in my sandbox where I report what appears to be the current consensus / lack thereof regarding the phonetic values. Botterweg14  (talk)  01:39, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, it can be included in 'non-Wikivoice' then, as in 'scholars A, B and C assume', if you absolutely insist; but 'Wikivoice' means just 'most scholars say' in any case. As far as I can see, there is no 'lack (of current consensus) regarding the phonetic values': see my references above. You write that 'this does not amount to a decipherment since it results in words that are uninterpretable', citing a 2022 article by Salgarella; I would be interested to how her statement was worded, because, as I said, the main thrust of her 2020 book (Aegean linear script(s): rethinking the relationship between Linear A and Linear B) is that Linear B and Linear A are essentially the same script, and Linear B obviously is deciphered. It seems to me that there is a confusion here between decipherment of a script and 'decipherment'/understanding of a language; we could have texts in an unknown language written in the Latin or Greek alphabet and still not understand them (reading in them with Latin and Greek sound values would 'result in words that are uninterpretable'), but it would be odd to say that 'the script is undeciphered' on that basis. It's as if people for some reason expect the language to be Greek or something else well-known and easily understandable, and the very fact that what comes out is not Greek (it's 'gibberish', as put by Ploversegg above) is seen as discrediting the sound values. The ancient Near East and Mediterranean were full of language isolates or members of tiny and obscure families; if anything, I would be surprised if Minoan, which clearly had been indigenous to Crete for a long time, was closely related to any other well-known language. We were lucky that Linear B happened to be in a variety of something as well-known as Greek - that is the exception, not the norm, and expecting the same kind of 'decipherment' story to take place with Linear A is highly unrealistic. Scholars' readings of Sumerian, Elamite and Hurrian are essentially based on the values known from Akkadian cuneiform (with greater or lesser subsequent modifications based on later evidence), and the only reason why this results in words that are 'interpretable' is because we happen to have some bilingual texts.--62.73.69.121 (talk) 09:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't deeply disagree with anything you're saying, but the hedging I'm suggesting comes from the scholars themselves, e.g. Salgarella describes the sounds values as "reasonably secure". I like the way you handled the uncertainty in your table, though I've moved it to the "Decipherment" subsection. Botterweg14  (talk)  20:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, I've been bold and made the tables of syllabograms and logograms, following closely the model of the Linear B article, which, after all, lists basically the same signs. There are some divergences between the sources on some of the signs, which I've reflected partly in the table by writing 'disputed' and adding question marks. A neater-looking option might be simply to stick only to Davis' version, who is probably the best of the cited sources (Raison & Pope are a bit older, and I suspect that there might be some accidental errors in Fang et al.), but I couldn't find the glyph or even the Bennett number for at least one of his sign shapes (ju).--62.73.69.121 (talk) 20:19, 29 March 2024 (UTC)