News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Amateur may have cracked Linear A, a 120-year-old puzzle. Parent comment

Re:Amateur may have cracked Linear A, a 120-year-old puzzle by yorwba on Friday June 19, 2026 @04:18PM (#48602802)
There's actually at least one Greek word of Semitic derivation attested in Linear B https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kupirijo_in_museum.j... namely the island of Cyprus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%9A%CF%8D%CF%80%CF%81%CE%B... , whence also "copper." If the pre-Greek population of Crete was Semitic, there should be a lot more such loans, especially toponyms.

Speaking of Greek, Linear B and Semitic, the related Cypriot syllabary was deciphered thanks to a bilingual inscription in Phoenician and Greek: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idalion_bilingual And just as in Crete, there is an undeciphered pre-Greek language written in the same script: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eteocypriot_language

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amateur may have cracked Linear A, a 120-year-old puzzle by YeGoblynQueenne on Friday June 19, 2026 @08:15PM (#48604881)
The name of Cyprus being of semitic origin is probably easy to hand-wave away as the result of trade.

I'd like to offer some evidence that the people of Crete were of Greek origin and therefore Indo-European rather than semitic, unfortunately all the scholarship I can find on the subject is from Greek scholars and since it confirms that the Minoans are genetically related to modern Greeks, the more I hear of that evidence the less I am convinced by it. Because it's exactly consistent with confirmation bias. So I would not be surprised if the Minoans turned out to be one of the lost tribes of Israel.

Except of course we know those turned up in the America so they can't be the Minoans.

Yeah it's a joke. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Indian_theory

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amateur may have cracked Linear A, a 120-year-old puzzle by Kosturdistan on Friday June 19, 2026 @04:30PM (#48602913)
I'm not an expert on linguistics, but I will say that Crete at that time was polylingual. No one is saying that everyone on the island spoke this Minoan semitic language; only the semitic people on the island, and it was a diverse population.
[ Parent | on HN ]