Undeciphered Ancient Scripts 

I was going to decipher all those undeciphered ancient scripts--but then things got really busy at work.

I'm working on the Linear A example at the beginning of the video, in conjunction with a number of experts I met on the internet. While the translation remains incomplete, so far we've got, "A great deluge ... end of megalithic era ... the Younger Dryas ... built by aliens ... conventional academics." I'll keep you informed of updates 😉😅 Jokes aside, absorbing video, thank you for sharing your erudition.

You know, I didn’t expect spend an hour listening to two guys talk calmly and concisely about undeciphered texts in history… and yet, an hour later, here I am, blown away by how interesting it was. Awesome vid!

It's so great to hear from a linguist urging caution on various pushes to insist that this or that untranslated script / language 'must' be from this or that desired society or other language. It's probably not that all academics ignore brilliant explanation X; it's just that X hasn't really worked. We can only hope that someday some of these might get worked out.

terrific guest, really knowledgeable. I'm really glad there's a critical community around these ancient languages so hopeful guesses don't turn into assumed facts

I have a school report from the late 90s. Most of its legible but one of my teachers writing on there has never been deciphered.

Would definitely love a video going in depth into the indus valley script. Covering the history of popular proposed interpretations, describing what many of them look like, any similarities to other scripts, etc.

I can read the linear A script. It says, "remember that time those aliens built those pyramids and then just left? That was crazy, bro!"

Regarding the Phaestos Disk script, a woman working at the Malia site told me last year that another example of that script was recently found at one of the digs near Malia, but that it's hadn't been published yet.

He sure is polite about the amateurs “peculiar” interpretations 😂

Thanks David and Mark. I found this to be a very interesting talk. This subject has always attracted me and I learned a lot.

I think JRR Tolkien would’ve enjoyed Mark tremendously. Linguistics and cryptology are always interesting. A dedicated review of the Indus Valley script would certainly be interesting.

Thank you for having a talkative 😊 linguist!! Thank you Mark 🙂 i loved hearing from you! These vids with another professional in their field, make me happy... it's like getting to hang out with knowledgeable people that i would have no chance to casually listen to otherwise 😁 and you especially, Dr. David 💖. Yes, please do indepth vids on all ancient languages and on all other ancient history you know & want to share 🤗

Half dozen eggs. Quart of milk. That's all I could get out of the Minoan script.

I’m a history major and I wish this guy was teaching courses, he was so interesting!

Amazing. I love the great guests on this channel. All so passionate about their subjects. It rubs off!!

As an expert non-decipherer of undeciphered scripts I can tell you with certainty that these scripts thus far remain undeciphered. But I do enjoy listening to Mr. Newbrook's accent! He's very easy to listen to and full of great information.

Although superficially indeed similar to Egyptian symbols, Cretan Hieroglyphs are clearly distinct in both form and phonetic value. Yet the biggest difference lies in the underlying system itself. Egyptian Hieroglyphs are part of a complex writing system, where most signs have more than one possible reading, dependent on context (similarly to the Japanese Kanji characters). Signs could have both a phonetic (single consonant or syllable) value or an ideogrammatic (word) reading, but could even be utilized as phonetic complements or logograms (a written character that represents a word or phrase, like in Chinese), “reinforcing” the reading of words they were attached to. As many of these duplicities could only be interpreted by a native speaker of Old Egyptian, this system was very difficult to utilize for speakers of foreign languages. Also, the Egyptian system had over 800 different signs, which is an extremely large inventory of symbols compared to Cretan Hieroglyphs (roughly 85 or so different signs are known). Linear A signs identified ranges from 77 to 85 according to different scholars, suggesting that this was a syllabic writing system. Minoan scribes might have took the concept of writing from Egypt, creating their own signs and simplifying the system so that it became almost fully phonetic. Such a low number of individual characters is uncharacteristic of the complex writing systems of the ancient Near East, but it is fully compatible with a simple syllabary (reminiscent of the modern Japanese Hiragana or Katakana writing). Thus, some assume that Cretan Hieroglyphs, similarly to all later Aegean writing systems, were already syllabic in nature. Other scholars see Semitic influences / a relationship to Mesopotamian writings in the Minoan language, but these depend solely on Semitic loanwords, such as “sesame”, a word that appears in both Linear A and B (and also in ENGLISH). One thing is clear: After the rebuilding of the palatial complexes on Crete (with the advent of the so-called “New Palace Period”) the Hieroglyphic script fell out of regular use. A new script has taken its place, called Linear A. Linear A was used much more extensively than Cretan Hieroglyphs. Hundreds of clay tablets, inscribed vessels, statues, altar stones and even jewelery testifies its daily use. The triumph of Linear A is also striking in a geographical sense: Wherever Cretan traders went, Linear A followed. Perhaps due to the simplicity of the syllabary, it quickly spread to other regions surrounding Crete. While regularly used on many Aegean islands, sporadic finds suggest that it also reached the Greek mainland as well as the island of Cyprus and the Syrian coast.

I’d be interested in how AI could be implemented to help decipher these scripts! If it has access to all written words and all known languages. I bet it could find some pretty compelling links or chance similarities. What’s the state of using AI tools these days?

17:05 It might be neither Dravidian, nor Indo-European. There are language isolates in India and the region that have survived to this day. Like Nihali (which may be invented as an argot), Burushaski (which may not be isolated actually), and Kusunda. There were probably a lot more, that disappeared.

As a Moroccan who has absolutely zero interest in Moroccan cuisine or any cuisine for that matter, I have to say that this personal bias of mine didn't prevent me from being proud of my national cuisine for attracting the attention of Mr.Miano.

A fascinating discussion, a great guest and just a treat all round. Thank you both.

Dr Miano, I would love it if you could get Irving Finkle on to talk about cuneiform, that man is both fascinating in his own right and an expert in Mesopotamian language.

Surely the test for a decipherment is whether it can be used to read new finds in that text that were not available to the people proposing the decipherment. I suspect that underwater archaeology is going to find us a lot more samples of linear A etc, and it would be interesting to see what an artificial intelligence program could do with these.

Terrific episode and a great guest!

About Linear A, I'm interested in the theory that "Minoan" was the ancestor of Eteocretan, which is written with Greek letters. As in all of these cases, there's not enough extant text to prove anything conclusively. However, it does hold out the possibility there is some "Rosetta Stone" of Greek and Eteocretan still undiscovered which might help with Linear A.

This is a brilliant interview/video. Thanks for bringing this to us. Will be buying this book

25:05 The Zapotec Script is the prettiest script I've ever seen. The characters look so great they could have an animated Cartoon based on those drawings. Even if we can't understand their meaning the artists that drew them was an amazing talent. It also has a style that is so unique compared to Western and Eastern texts.

I loved this, such an interesting conversation and Mark is wonderful. I would love another video on any of these scripts, along with Mark as well!

Thank you David and Mark this was an absolute pleasure to watch.

As a pseudo-linguist myself ( I just know a couple of indo-european and japonic languages, but not at a native level) I would love to see something about the Indus Valley Script ( even if I know that my Sanskrit studies have nothing to do with it) or Linear A. Or maybe the Tărtăria Tablets found in my country, Romania. 15 years ago I was knee deep in ancient scripts. Now i don't have so much time with my Japanese studies.

I have lived in Spain for nearly 13 years having moved from the UK and find Spanish hand writing quite difficult to read. Children here learn to write cursive script from the start while way back in my 1950s uk childhood we printed first then learned to join the letters. I actually also find my own handwriting difficult to decipher or even recognise as mine. My handwriting has, of course, disintegrated since now I rarely practice it.

I really enjoy these vids where you talk to an expert in the relevant topic of discussion . Cheers.

Would love a detailed video on the Indus Valley language and script!

Love this channel. You seem like you’d be a great teacher

The first script shown is my grandma’s recipe for ginger beer. Looks same same. Glad I could help😁

Thank you for giving a platform to another wonderful expert... fascinating as always!

This is a great video. I had never heard of most of these.

This is one of my favorite topics. I would love a deep dive video on any one of these scripts!

One of the most RIVETING episodes by the good doctor! I enjoyed this more than anything I've seen in the past couple years! Both of the scholars struck me as wry, informed, animated, and vastly entertaining. Thank you so much.

I love learning new writing systems, firstly because it feels I can write secretly, secondly because it is the easiest part of learning a language (when the translation is known) and help understand an unknown language even when you don't know the language

One thing I always wondered... We do know Linear B was derived from Linear A and we know Linear B was Mycenaean Greek. I assume they tried to read Linear A using the phonetic sounds of Linear B and got nothing. I still think that the way to start.. for historical example...look how Semitic people working in the mines in Sinai, they took Egyptian hieroglyphs and created a short hand which we have examples we call this script Abjad which seeded writing alphabet to all the Semitic peoples like the Hebrews, Phoenician to name a few... (they wrote a lot of their writing with only consonants) and it was Phoenician traders who brought this alphabet to the greek island who converted some of those consonants they didn't need to a vowel But the point was B or BET did not change from language to language even the vowel that greek they derived from those aleph became A or the waw became a U. When people see writing they general take what they see useful and change things a little to suit them. So when they phonetically read linear A it wasn't greek, does it have to be greek? Could it not be a language isolates? anyways i am just rambling

Thank you for this straight to the point, excellent interview. It is highly informative.

Have to say I loved this video. Really made me think. Thanks to both you guys.

Thank you for your work in this area. I am not a linguist, but my son has a major in it. I love the conversation around science fiction and amateur alternate translations. I would love more on that. While it is great that Stargate featured an archeologist and linguist, I expect it would take considerably longer than a dinner party to figure out the Early Egyptian dialect/language that Daniel Jackson managed to become expert in just in time to save the day. And that isn’t considering the code sorting he needed to do to work out the language of the Ancients. I would love to know more about how linguists work to resolve these ancient manuscripts and how long it actually takes. I mean, even with a Rosetta Stone, it took a great deal of time to figure out Egyptian.

How about a video on each subject? It would make a fascinating series.

Rapidly approaching 100K Subs!!!! Very well deserved!

Another fascinating guest. Well done big fella!

Easter island script, definatly looks like a language, fits all the boxes of a language, like cuniform or egyptian hyrogrifics.

Thank You David!! Awesome!!! Keep up the Wonderful work!!!

Excellent video! I will come back to this one for more ideas and inspiration.

Imagine trying to decipher a script when the only example of it you had was a bus ticket!

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this video! I love learning about old languages.

Great guest! Interesting and informative!

Cool interview. I think it would be interesting to know more about proto-Elamite and Indus Valley languages.

If Linear A characters are assigned different values to be deciphered into Ancient Greek which guest Mark Newbrook at 6:55 says is a real possibility. Assuming this is true than to decipher Linear A we need a Linguist to team up with a top mark Cryptologist and a powerful computer. Cryptologists cracked the Enigma Machine Code in WW2 certainly they can crack the ancient code of Linear A if one really exists. I'm actually shocked this hasn't been attempted and ruled out as a possibility.

Excellent guest and excellent interview, my compliments. If you ever do a follow up interview, perhaps some more can be discussed about the methods and (hard- and software) tools employed by skeptical linguists in their deciphering attempts and in the attempts to verify and falsify various interpretations of scripts.

Another awesome guest! I absolutely love your videos. 🍻

That was a great video! Ideally I'd like to see you examine all the ancient scripts one by one in future videos. 🙂 Also, an idea might be to look at the evolution of different families of scripts to show how different, later scripts developed from the influence of earlier ones.

Absolutely brilliant show of ancient world scripts/tablets. Loved it! Mark is very knowledgeable and i would like to know what he may have worked on in Australia while he was here.

Fascinating. Would love Mark's opinion on Danubian symbols and the theory it might be a proto script.

Amazing content! Thanks for this!

Imagine a guy in ancient times writing random made-up words on an artefact just to troll historians in the future.

Love this type of analytical discussion …. More please 🙏

Enjoyed this a lot, great guest! 👍

Enlightening and amusing - good work!

Nice presentation thanks. Really hope we find much more examples from the Indus Valley civilisations, if it could ever be deciphered ( or determined if it’s even a written script!) for me I think it could reveal incredibly important aspects of origin of ancient india maybe Sanskrit or non-Indo Europe ) languages. hugely interested in Elamite as well, but I guess due as much to political situation in these places sadly can’t see any incentive for many excavations in these locations however 😔

I loved this. Thanks for your work, Dr M

Great discussion for a layman, i especially enjoyed that you managed to both talk on legitimate scholarship and have some fun with the "alternative scholars".

That was really entertaining and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great work there.

My ancestry is Greek/Cypriot so always a treat when you talk about the history of those regions.

Incredibly interesting interview. Thanks very much.

Thank you David, for reminding me how to be excited about history and archeology.

As a Hungarian, I don't know the specifics of the case mentioned, however one thing to note is that while modern hungarian (based on the latin alphabet) is written left to right, old hungarian runic script (used by our nomadic ancestors) is written right to left. Of course they look completely different. Edit: Neeever mind, it came up later. Yes the origins of the language are shrouded in much mystery. Especially when you see some small tribes like the Manshi, forming sentences that readable by hungarians, which is quite stunning. I think there are tons of overlap with Turkish for root words, but not much more complex stuff, suggesting we coexisted a long time ago, then went our separate ways. Heck, there is some village I think in Africa, that is strangely inhabited some hungarian descendants, that still keep heritage symbols and language. The entire language and it's history is just an enigma.

Congratulations on the sponsor! Moving on up in the world.

It's Morbin'Time! Great job, Dr Miano! 👏

This was a fascinating discussion. Thank you!

What I find interesting with many of those amateur decoders of Ancient scripts is their fascination with the alleged magic of words. For some of them, it seems, that they are wishing to decipher a spell that changes the world forever. If they can read out loud this one script, then all our knowledge about History is obsolete, and has to be written anew. And they can get quite rabulous about it, clinging to fringe interpretations of out-of-context quotes to prove their point, as if written language is some reality of its own that can be superimposed on the less fashionable reality around us if you just pronounce it correctly.

What an adorable man Mark is! I hope you have him back soon! He is so knowledgeable and charming and tells great anecdotes!

Great chat!

Totally fascinating man and conversation!

I do truly hope we will be able to read these texts one day. Imagine the knowledge to be gained.

Excellent video as usual Dr. Miano! Personally, I would love to see an in-depth video on the Mayan script and language. What do they tell us about that civilization? It's a subject I'm certainly unfamiliar with except in a cursory way, and I have a feeling the same may be true of other viewers. That would be really cool

This was NOT too long. It eas fantastic and i hope for more like it. Wonderful. On many levels.

Many years ago now, I only took a Bachelor's in Classical Philology before switching fields. Yet when I was in Classics, a common hypothesis (obviously unprovable) was that (allowing for the usual phonological differences between similar sounds in different languages) most likely Linear A symbols and Linear B symbols do in fact have the same phonological values when the same. IIRC it was a syllabary but I also thought some symbols were not common between the two. So, by this hypothesis, we are able to read the sounds of Linear A without understanding or identifying the language. The usual supplementary hypothesis was then that this hypothetical language we called Minoan could be an isolate, could be a last remaining member of a wider language family, or any other possibility consistent with known facts. The sounds and patterns of the language if the first hypothesis is correct do not resemble any language family we know and we don't have any parallel texts.

I'm mesmerized. Thank you both.

Amazing video, nice format too.

Once again, thank you Dr Milano. Great video and perhaps do a deep dive in the Nubian script

A very interesting, video for me because I have a kind of minor in linguistics [I have worked in ESL/EFL]. What strikes me about the Byblos syllabary is that in addition to letters of Latin and Greek alphabets, there are things that resemble Korean letters, Chinese characters and even runes. That might suggest forgery by a world traveler, or merely that there are a limited number of simple symbols possible in a given medium. It could actually represent the work of an ancient scribe trying out various forms; and if this is the case, there might be a possibility to use proximity and frequency as a clue to meaning.

Great episode, learned many things

Nowhere near your guys’ level of expertise, but have a Masters degree in Historical perspective, and teach High School History. This was a fantastic watch! Very fascinating!

Very fascinating and I definitely passed the vid on to my son who is trying to lean Old English on his own. He is only 17 too but has been trying to learn it since he was 15. He wants to be a historic linguist. He even has decided on a school. :D I most definitely encourage him. Getting him in touch with Mark would be very beneficial to him. I think talking with someone who understands would be very awesome. He talks to me but I only understand to a certain degree as it is not my forte. Mine is artifacts and ruins.

I learn so much from watching your source filled, educational videos. Your comedy skills and storytelling skills are great too! Thank you for what you do!

I would have liked him talk a bit of the Danube script too, it probably isn't a language but it could be. Anyways, a very interesting topic. I still hope someone figures out Linear A, any information about the Minoans would be great since we know so little about them. Did they even have kings and if so, what was their names? What was their religion? What did they call themselves? Was Minos a real person? and so on... I do think we have some chance at least of cracking that one, someone at least figured out their numeric system and that is certainly a good first step and the genetic study that showed they were very closely related (but not identical) to the Mycenae Greeks points to them at least speaking an Indo European language, probably at least related to the Mycenae Greek language also helps. Those are recent finds, before 2019 we had no clue if they were at all related to the Greeks or even Indo European and that makes decoding their language way harder.

It’s amazing that even though this Linear A script is thousands of years old, I can recognize modern “characters” we use today, like Y, and X, and an asterisk. 🤩

a genuine history channel at last YAY!!

obrigado! Gostei da entrevista.

I enjoyed this video very much. Thank you both. It would be great if you could do a more in-depth look at a few of these scripts. My picks would be Indus Valley, Linear B and the one found in Spain/Portugal, if possible.

Very informative interview. Suggest that photos of the texts and inscribed objects being discussed be kept on view while the conversation continues.

That was excellent! Thank you. A.I. might make some serious progress down the track?