In 1908, an archaeologist in Crete discovered a small clay disk bearing unknown symbols. Now known as the Phaistos disk, it remains a modern enigma. The Phaistos disk from circa 1700 B.C. The signs ...

The Minoan Civilization of Crete, often hailed as Europe’s first literate society, left behind a strange writing system that continues to mystify modern scholars, remaining an unsolved enigma to this ...

A team of archaeologists has discovered in Knossos, on the Greek island of Crete, the longest Linear A inscription found to date. The script appears on a circular ivory object with an attached handle, ...

A recent study has shed new light on the Minoan system of fractions, one of the outstanding enigmas tied to the ancient writing of numbers. A recent study by a team based at the University of Bologna, ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Jill Kitson: Welcome to Lingua Franca on ABC Radio National. This week: The mystery of Linear B, the ...

Clay tablet, dated to 1450-1375 BC, inscribed with Linear B script. The Linear B script of the Mycenaen civilization (c. 1600 to 1100 BC) represented an early form of Greek. It was descended from the ...

In 1886, the British archaeologist Arthur Evans came across an ancient stone bearing a curious set of inscriptions in an unknown language. The stone came from the Mediterranean island of Crete, and ...