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https://greekreporter.com/2022/04/20/minoan-language-linear-a-linear-b/
The Minoan language known as "Linear A" may finally be deciphered with the help of the internet which can be used to uncover previously-hidden links to the much-better understood Linear B language. Linear B developed later in the prehistoric period.
The puzzle of Linear A has tormented linguists for many decades, as they attempted to link it somehow to Linear B, which was translated successfully for the first time in the 1950s. Linear B was used on the Greek mainland and Crete 50-150 years later than Linear A.
Understanding the link between them and decoding the secrets of Linear A would allow experts to paint a much more complete picture of Minoan civilization going back as far as 1,800 BC.
Linear A, which was used by the Minoans during the Bronze Age, exists on at least 1,400 known inscriptions made on clay tablets. The language has baffled the world's top archaeologists and linguistic experts for many years.
Professor Tim Whitmarsh, the A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture and Fellow of St. John's, had high praise for Salgarella's work and said that "cracking Linear B was a huge post-war triumph for Classics, but Linear A has remained elusive."
"Dr. Salgarella has demonstrated that Linear B is closely related to its mysterious and previously illegible predecessor. She has brought us one step closer to understanding it. It's an extraordinary piece of detective work," praises Whitmarsh.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @07:13PM (3 children)
"the prehistoric period" - uh, at the point where we have writing and it's being decyphered, it is literally not prehistoric any more.
Still, nifty - glad to see ML being leveraged for nerdy good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @07:56PM
Internet experts can go F themselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday May 19 2022, @09:04PM (1 child)
Actually, it is. We have the writing, but we have no idea of the date when it was written. History requires accurate dates to give a timeline, so we can determine if events are simultaneous, or what duration separates them. The dates of Ancient Egyptian history are still a subject of much debate. A date of the 7th year of Pharoah doesn't place the date in the context of the Gregorian dating system used today. So it is recorded, but without a Gregorian date. There's a great deal of debate over what the earliest accurately dated human event is - many cite the Battle of Halys [wikipedia.org]"The Battle of the Eclipse", but if you read the linked Wikipedia article, you can see there is much uncertainty about it. Something being recorded doesn't make it history - it needs a date that meshes with our current dating system. Dates posited before certain dates are prehistoric for that part of the world. Prehistory varies by geography - for example, in Papua New Guinea, there are places with no recorded dates before the 20th century.
We can give estimates for prehistoric dates, which can be as accurate as carbon dating, and relative dates according to a local dating system that isn't connected in some way to the Gregorian calendar can give an idea of the chronology of the period, but we have no way of knowing if a Linear A tablet was written in 1800 BCE, or 1805 BCE, whether it was in March or April, or which day of the month it was written on.
For an even more in depth view of historical dates and chronology, this unlikely source of somebody's view on the use of the <time> element in HTML [quirksmode.org] outlines the problems. In that author's view, the earliest accurately known date is 300 BC
Go far enough away from the present and planetary orbits and their satellites become chaotic, so even astronomical events are clouded with uncertainty - see Fred Espernaks (now hosted by NASA) excellent resources on this, but to quote just one web-page: NASA: Fred Espernak: Eclipse Predictions and Earth's Rotation [nasa.gov]
tl;dr - prehistory varies by geography. At the time Linear A was being written, there are no dates that connect to the currently used Gregorian calendar, so recorded events, even using a local dating system, are outside of the current historical timeline. We simply cannot know when they were written.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday May 19 2022, @09:09PM
Oh, and I found the link to the html time element discussion in this Reddit conversation. Credit where credit is due, and it makes an interesting read too:
r/AskHistorians: What is the earliest recorded date that we can determine accurately? [reddit.com]