Helena Tomas - It’s All Linear B to Me
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- čas přidán 18. 04. 2018
- Archaeologist and language expert Helena Tomas wants to do the incredible: She wants to decipher the worlds most ancient language Linear A. In this ground breaking talk Helena takes us on a trip back to ancient Greece to retell the stories the Minoan Civilization which used the Linear A language, a language that is the earliest European script. Watch as she describes how Linear B was composed and how she hopes to be able to crack the code that is Linear A by using principles from the original Linear B Rosetta Stones. Make sure to watch this talk and find out what Helena’s favourite hobby is.
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Fascinating. Wish they had given this lady more time!
La
M mm vixllk,
Ok lol.loo I'm
I'll second that!
"toso" means "that much" in modern greek btw. We still use that word.
Yup, I found more words that seem to match some archaic concepts like spoke(SPITA) for kindred people (derived from one root). It seems we discovered our pre-indoeuropean ancestors!😀⚘👍
Great talk! It's always a breath of fresh air when scholars of Minoan epigraphy don't just jump to translating the Linear A inscriptions to their favourite language, sometimes without even undersstanding Linear B no less.
It's a shame that it really appears that we only have a handful of actual sentences, with the libation table formula being really repetitive and the vast number of tablets being lists, with names, toponyms, abbreviations, logograms and numbers and no actual grammar or syntax.
This is fabulous. I want more data too.
I believe many of the tablets were preserved by the fire that destroyed the building containing them. The heat from the fire baked what was otherwise sun-dried clay, which doesn't preserve as well. I read an interpretation of the tablets found at Pylos that suggested they recorded the logistics of the final, unsuccessful defense of that city.
Helena Tomas, great lecture
An excellent presentation which it is worth a long lifetime to hear. I have always lived by the school that suggests language related initially to numbers and labels.
Cool talk -- would gladly trade 5 minutes of theseus sparknotes for 5 more minutes on her actual work. Also amusing to call minoans the first western / European civ. Would love her explanation on which Mediterranean rocks are European and which are Asian.
Great presentation! I would have loved to be an archeologist myself. This type of ancient civilisations research and especially the deciphering of lost languages is amazing, to say the least. Thanks to Helena Thomas for this talk!
Fabulous hopes... :-)
very interesting
Ωραιο βιντεο😍
He -le -na seems to be the same phonetically as ke-re-na if you read the syllabary closely. How does that work?
Minoan is one of proto-Greek cultures and Linear A an undeciphered predecessor of Linear B. Modern genetic testing studies (in the last 5-10 years) have determined that Minoan DNA is dominant in modern day Cretans, and Mycenean & Minoan DNA is strongly linked to each other and to modern Greeks. Eventually, Linear A will be deciphered, most likely by using Linear B as one of the guides.
There’s a gap of only about 50 years between the last Linear A scripts and the first Linear B-not enough time for the language to evolve beyond recognition. Also, given the number of scholars who are expert in Ancient Greek and have tried to decipher Linear A, if it had Greek roots, they would have been found.
Not just another pretty face. Very impressive intro presentation and the enormous body of knowledge it betells.
Linear A is a local Minoan short hand invented and used by clerks to record animal commodity transactions. Linear B generalised this to other commodities in response to Increased trade with (what we now call) Greece.
Linear A was used for religious inscriptions and other non-document purposes, as well as for documents. Some of the documents are clearly staffing records, records of workers’ rations, and commerce in a number of commodities, not just livestock. Linear A goes far beyond livestock transactions.
Wah wah wah!
Egyptian script is both linear A (or pictographic : one sign can represent a word) , linear B (or syllabic : one sign for one syllable )and phonetic (one sign for one phonem)
Linear A and B both contain syllabic symbols AND ideographs.
She knows.
Cool talk. Does anyone know:
The Cheokee Alphabet uses English alphabet symbols, but the phonemes do not translate. The inventor of the Cherokee alphabet understood the concept of writing, but could not read English. So he copied many English symbols and gave them phonemes from the English alphabet.
How do we know Linear A and Linear B are not the same? Maybe the Myceneans copied the symbols but assigned them their own sounds? Can we rule this out?
Linear A Linear B is a script that dates back to 2200 BC. only found in Greece and in no other area outside Greece
We find Linear A Linear B in Central Greece, Peloponnese, Crete and many islands
The language of Linear B is Greek
In Linear A we don't have many inscriptions to draw any definite conclusions
Linear B it is a further development of Linear A from it with different grammatical rules
the hieroglyphs of Crete, the language is also Greek
In Linear B's thousands of panels, we didn't find a single one with a foreign language
@@panagiotis7946 Thank you, but you misunderstood my question. I wanted to know how we knew the phonemes were the same. English, Spanish, and Cherokee use many of the same symbols. Spanish and English use nearly the same phonemes for these symbols, but English and Cherokee use completely different phonemes for the same symbols.
How do we know Linear A and Linear B share phonemes like English and Spanish? How do we know they don't just use the same symbols with different phonemes like English and Cherokee?
@@JLS639 certainly here we have a processing of the elements with a much smaller amount
Many elements of Linear A from it have been removed and others changed phonetically and syntactically
A problem arises here because we don't have many inscriptions to compare for deciphering Linear A, as Michael Ventris did with Linear B in 1952
We certainly know that these are writing systems that were only developed in the Greek area
This formed the basis for the development of the regular alphabet we know today
I think that you meant "he copied the letters in the English alphabet but then just arbitrarily assigned sounds to the letters from the Cherokee language. And did so just randomly without regard to the sounds assigned to the letters in English. So his Cherokee writing looks like English but sounds nothing like English, nor does it even sound like Cherokee WOULD sound if he had adopted both the letters AND the sounds that English speaking Americans assigned to those letters. So if a future civilization tried to decipher his Cherokee alphabet they wouldnt be able to use the mainstream writings of English speaking Americans to reconstruct the language even though both languages use the same letters.
We know that many of the sounds of Linear A and B were the same, or at least similar, because of the number of place names and personal names that appear in both scripts.
There are also other indications that the Mycenaeans learned directly from Minoan scribes. For example, the Mycenaeans adopted Minoan bookkeeping methods, which isn’t easy to pick up just by looking at the script.
The Minoan people were still around. There are plenty of non-Greek names mixed in with Greek names in Linear B records, and evidence that the Minoan language continued to be spoken after the Mycenaeans took over. The Mycenaeans didn’t have to invent a script by looking at documents-they could just ask the surviving scribes.
Check ugric paleo hungarisch. Old branch of family was on edge of Med. Could be long ago relative. Seek cognates to find a crack in the code.
Aaand correct.
It doesn’t pan out. There’s no geographical overlap and too much time between Minoan and the earliest known examples of Hungarian.
PANT HEIGHT
Linear B is archaic form of Greek but also closely related to other dialects than that of the Hellenic tribe that conquered the Peloponnese. There was no Greek language as such at the time of Mycenaeans in the Greek land. There was no unification of all tribes at the time but rather many kingdoms and tribes speaking an Indo-European language with variations in sound.
I believe the language and vocabulary of the Phaistos Disk translation may shed light in the language spoken in North of Greece as well as in Crete and there could be related to Luvian or Hatti or the languages spoken around the Black Sea, which are closely related to modern day slavic languages.
I have analysed the translation if the Phsistos Disk and those studying Linear A may benefit from it. You can find me on Linkedin.
You are wrong. There was a principal or "the great king" of Ahhiyawa, as we know from letters that Hattushili king of Hatti wrote to "the great king of Ahhiyawa".
@@krunomrkiThere were a lot of “great kings” at the time. In any case, Linear B tablets make it clear that each political entity was independent-no one ruled all of Greece.
Interesting, but the presentation lacked the principles, like laying out all the letters or syllables.
She mentions KU-RO in Linear A for total. The IE word is kuel which has an l and not r. In Akkadian: ku(wa)lan, in Luwian : kulan. The Hellenic tribe, as usual, removes the first consonant and so in Greek it became olon/ olo (means all). Interestingly, the Cypriots say oula instead of ola and I can only presume that they retained the levant sound ku as in kou and no as in ko.
Interesting. You know that there was no separate symbol in linear A and B to distinguish syllable with R from syllables with L . Therefore this gives additional credibility to an Akkadian/Luwian connection.
@@georgesdellopoulos5808 indeed the symbol of a cross in Linear B is used for both RO and LO. Linear A is said to be RO but it could be LO as it is obvious this agrees with the Levantine and Anatolian accent. Also, Semitic root for all is kol, finnish: Kaikki
In cretan and cypriotic dialects there is no significant phonetic difference between l and r value. At least, so I heard!😉
They reconstruct a root koylos to explain Germanic words that give English 'whole'.
It can also be from kwel with a semantic shift to round up > to sum up.
ku-ro ancient Greek kuro means boy or teenager
They seem to have tried all sorts of ancient languages - except for one : Khymric or Welsh. the same error as in trying to decipher Egyptian heiroglyphics.
Are you trying to say that ancient Egyptian was Welsh?
By which measure is Linear A supposed to be the worlds most ancient language
Thanks for pointing out that error. I'm surprised that hasn't been edited by now.
It is not the most ancient, but of the most ancient that we hold records of. Mesopotamia records are as old as Linear A but there are symbols from the Danube River which dates to around 5000 BC which could give more clues. The Proto IE is dates to 10,000 but no written records.
The most ancient written language, i.e. 3000BC
@@georgesdellopoulos5808 the oldest so far discovered written language is of the Danubian civilisation dated around 5000 BCE which influenced the mesopotamian, the Luwian, the Cretan and Aegean (Linear A) and Indus Valley etc.
There have been successful attempts and decipherment of Danubian tablets which even have words we have in Ancient Greek, such as aiai, φριν, as per paper published in 2018 by a linguist.
@@ellanguage9305 I think she said the oldest written European language and that's accurate
Its looking like Peter Revesz has deciphered Linear A by comparing it with Ancient Hungarian. Argued most convincingly by him to be the derived from the migrating/invading Magyars originating in Colchis, former custodian of the Golden Fleece.
i agree with peter revesv & DM
The geography and timelines don’t line up. It’s just an odd Hungarian nationalist theory.
After years of researching the 'out of Africa' (OOA) movement of humans & their developments in the various continents they ended up in, I am constantly amazed by so called ' experts' & ' specialists' that feel a compunction to appear in public and make statements of ' absolutes'. One would think that even applying a limited bit of logic would make them think twice about making broad sweeping statements such "...worlds most ancient language..."! Indeed we have some Tamil ' scholars' in South India declare that Dravidian languages, in particular Tamil is the oldest language in the World, and it seemingly this linguistic arrogance is also part of some European commentators. It appears clear that the oldest humans OOA are to be found in Australia. Their history there is at least 40,000 to 50,000 years old. I would gently put it to these " old World linguistic experts" who spout the origins of language as being ancient Greek or Tamil or whatever, divest themselves of nationalism or any type of 'ism', before going on the World stage speaking about 'findings' or 'views' that have no basis in logic.
Europe's oldest.
She was very clear in what she said you need to listen to the video again and follow your advice of not jumping in to conclusions
@@GamersOdyssey Actually if you read the introduction to this video above, you may see that it espouses the following: "...Archaelogist and language expert Helena Tomas wants to do the incredible: She wants to decipher the worlds most ancient language Linear A....". Yes, it does say "..worlds most ancient language..." . I stand by my comment!
Archaeology is not the study of ancient civilizations it’s anthropology
Anthropology is the study of human culture. Archaeology is the study of the material remains of culture.
Funny, she mentions all of the ancient languages she's using to decipher Linear A except for one. And ironically that is her mother thounge.
At that time croatian did not exist yet for sure
@@francescopiana9375 Before the language was called Croatian, it was called Illyrian. And Illyrian was same as Thracian.
Hahahaha croation was never spoken 2000 years ago let alone 10000 years ago.. ceoation came to Balkans in 8th century a.d a good reason why she won't dare mention croation hahahahaha ... Anything illyrian I'm croation is more Albanian then anything ...Albanians lived in present day croation up until the Slavic invasion
@@azembejta2463 Sorry, I totally forgot about that. Croats, together with other Slavs came from the swamps somewhere from "the east", took the lands and wiped out completelly warlike Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, Germans. They populated more that half of Europe from Baltic to Adriatic and Black sea in the blink of an eye. And they did this without leaving any record of it. They wiped out all indegeneous people before them, and today every ancient language that was spoken before their arriaval is unknow to modern science. Woow. I have one problem though with this theory. When ancient historians describe Illyrians they always say that they were very tall warlike people and that they were elite soldiers of the Roman empire. Present day South Slavs are among the highest male population in the Europe and the world, and Albanians being the shortest in Europe. Who knows, maybe Stipe Miočić or Mirko Filipović have Albanian roots which they are not aware of. We won't get into the basketball, football, handball, or any other sport which is just modern representation of war. Another little problem is the fact that throughout whole middle ages south slavic languages were adressed as Illyrian by all contemporary historians and ethnonym "Illyrian" was a synonim for whole south slavic population. This 19th century narrative of mass Slav migration, which then led today Albanians claiming Illyrian heritage is easilly disproven by genetics only. For example at least 70% population of modern day Bosnia and Herzegovina which was the heart of ancient Illyria are autochthonous!!! So according to modern science mass migration is a fairytale. Sorry for breaking a party.
@@pinnespinnes7852 i see alot of inconsistency in what you are saying and my spelling hahahaha however albanians are indegenous of the Balkans ...at anyrate enjoy the info u gave never hold back and again thank you ....
It is related to hungarian.
It is not. I’ve seen the theory it’s based on, and it’s garbage.
Albanien
It’s Hungarian. Specifically Uralic.
No, the theory is junk. The geography and timelines don’t line up.
..it leads me to believe that linear a may come from an extra terrestrial source..... a Aosmic Language if you will......
love how people just dismiss the Maya and Nubian people of not figuring out the cosmos thousand years before everyone else and say its aliens : P they had thousands of years to develop advanced civilizations and architecture.
Large language generative models (chatgbt unfortunate example) would be a good tool to apply to this problem Unicode 10600 to 1077F ((hex) encodes the Linear A characters. Go.
The problem is there’s not enough material to work with. It’s like trying to rebuild the English language from a sheaf of store receipts.