Linear B and the Mycenaean language

**makedonche** · 07-16-2010, 10:51 PM

SoM
Many thanks, this is outstanding stuff and I will continue to do some research and hopefully post some usefull information. Once again many thanks this has been very helpfull!

**Sovius** · 07-23-2010, 08:45 AM

Thanks SoM, some solid information right from the source. It would seem that my previous objections have been confirmed.

We see here that Chadwick, himself, declared the work to be conjectural:

�Much of this is of course conjectural, and these transcripts are intended rather to enable those with some knowledge of Greek to see how we extract meaning from the text.�

Well, let�s think about this for a second. They extracted meaning not from the text, but from combinations of syllables that were applied to these symbols thousands of years after they were made, combinations that then had to be adapted in order to project their apparent �Greekness�. It�s not the same endeavor at all. In fact, according to Chadwick, Ventris did quite the opposite.

Some definitions of conjecture for the Hellenically challenged to ponder:

speculation: a hypothesis that has been formed by speculating or conjecturing (usually with little hard evidence)

guess: a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence (or no evidence)

�Some words have different meanings and many have different forms�

How did he really know this without the ability to independently verify the results?

This would have been more responsibly phrased as, �some of the word-like symbol/syllable pairings generated from this hypothetical association scheme yielded possible words that, when altered, appeared to conform to the earliest recorded language in use in the region. It still wouldn�t have made their efforts any more scientifically principled, however.

This proposed decipherment can be nothing more than hypothetical until the associations can be weighed against known values. The fact that the decipherment scheme is often passed on to students and the casual reader as an actual decipherment demonstrates how little people like to think for themselves these days and the ever present need to employ skepticism to anything we read or watch on television. For some reason, which I can�t adequately explain, the radio never lies and it�s OK to accept whatever someone says on the radio as truthful without hesitation.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 07-26-2010, 03:05 AM

Here is a link by Strabo with regard to the Pelasgian people and their origins, which may be of some use to the topic.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/5B*.html#2.4

Part of a complete English translation of Strabo. Site contains many Greek and Latin texts, translations and related material.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 10-11-2010, 06:14 AM

Here is a text from another book by Chadwick in relation to the Mycenaeans, this one entitled "The Mycenaean World". The first chapter, from where the below passage is cited, is, quite ironically, called "The Hellenization of Greece". It is an interesting example and insight into Chadwick's perceptions regarding the Mycenaeans, prehistoric Europe and the origins of the Greek language.

There is nothing easier in talking about the past than to ask meaningless questions, which nevertheless still appear sensible. If we ask: 'Where were the English when Julius Caesar invaded Britain?' there is no answer; at that date there were no inhabitants of Britain who could be identified as 'English'. Similarly we must beware of asking questions like: 'When did the Greeks reach Greece?' for this presupposes that there were any Greeks outside Greece. Yet this is a question which has often been asked and usually answered.

In both these examples the vital point is the meaning of 'the Greeks' or 'the English'. I intend by these terms speakers of the Greek or English languages respectively, for if they meant simply the inhabitants of Greece or England, the questions would be superfluous. Thus my question about the Greeks supposes the pre-existence of the Greek language outside Greece, a hypothesis for which there is no evidence. The Greek language is known from documents written in Greece from the 14th century BC onwards, and at various later periods in other countries too as the result of colonizing movements; but its motherland has always been, roughly speaking, the area occupied by the present state of Greece, though perhaps not originally extending as far north as the present frontier.

However, the present domain of a langauge is not necessarily its original home; the Hungarian language or the Turkish, for instance, must have reached their present areas from much further east. All we can say about Greek is that it seems to have left no traces outside Greece, except where it has spread in historical times. But the existence on the map of ancient Greece of dozens of place names without a meaning in Greek strongly suggests that at one time another language was spken there, though what this language was we have no means of knowing. Names such as Korinthos, Zakunthos, Athanai, Mukanai, Knosos (the traditional spelling Knossos is strictly incorrect), Amnisos, Tulisos are certainly derives from one or more unknown languages previously spoken in Greece.

It is this fact, the evidence for a non-Greek speaking population in prehistoric Greece, which has led serious scholars to ask: 'When did the Greeks enter Greece?' However, the analogies of well-known historical cases like 'When the English enter New Zealand?' must not blind us to the possibility that the Greek language did not exist before this presumed event, but was formed on Greek soil, just as Modern English was formed in England out of Anglo-Saxon heavily contaminated with Norman French and a few other foreign bodies. Is there any reason why this theory should not be preferred?

The traditional view of waves of Greek-speaking warriors marching down through the Balkans to subjugate Greece....this theory has been most often held is that there were three such waves of invaders, usually called Ionians, Achaeans and Dorians, after the classical division of the Greek dialects. It was even possible to date these invasions archaeologically: the Ionians would be the people who entere around the 20th century BC, the Achaeans about the 16th, the Dorians about the 12th. But this serves to expose one weakness in the theory, for it implies that the Dorians of the 12th century were still speaking what was recognizably the same language, despite minor differences, 800 years after losing contact with their Ionian cousins. Parallels suggest that the differences arising over such a long period would have been far greater than those which can be observed......Let us explore the alternative view. This hypothesis is that the Greek language did not exist before the 20th century BC, but was formed in Greece by the mixture of an indigenous population with invaders who another language......Whether the invaders of Greece spoke pure proto-Indo-European is doubtful; but at least we can be sure of many features of their language, even if the exac stage reached in develoment at the time of their arrival is hard to predict. When these proto-Greeks, as I shall call them, reached Greece, they mixed with the previous inhaitants, whom they succeeded in subjugating, and borrowed from them many words for unfamiliar objects; and the mispronounciation of Greek by these aboriginals led to permanent changes in the phonetics of the language. The borrowed words are particularly interesting, for they include the names of many plants and animals, as well as terms indicating a high degree of civilization, such as the word for 'bath' or the many terms to distinguish different kinds of pot.

There is no doubt that Chadwick and Ventris, after the initial decipherment by the latter, actively searched to 'find' Greek elements in Mycenaean history, society and language. However, let us now assess what Chadwick has written. I have highlighted certain parts in blue as I wish to question them further. For example, which document from the 14th century BC exists in the Greek language as it is historically known? What archaeological evidence is there of migrations from the 20th, 16th and 12th centuries BC, and how are they connected to the Ionians, Achaeans and Dorians?

Notice also that it is Chadwick who chooses to call these invaders by the name of 'proto-Greeks'. Chadwick does suggest that the Greek language was created in the southern Balkans, but it came about from an admixture of two or more languages. He does not, however, seem to consider Greece's present northern frontier, where the occupied Macedonian part of Greece is located, as a part of the territory of where the Greek language has its origins. This conclusion is only logical and serves as another indication that Macedonia has never been Greek, nor did Macedonia feature in the development of the hybrid language that, when solidified, came to represent Greek as it is historically known.

The analogy that Chadwick continually refers to between English and Greek can somewhat be applied to others also, including those languages in the Balkans today currently known as belonging to the Southern Slavic group. However, that in itself forms another topic which can be addressed at another, more appropriate time. So, if classical Greek is comparable to English, then Mycenaean is not the only ancestor of Greek, and given Chadwick's suggestion that the language of the invaders was unlikely to be 'pure' Proto Indo-European, it is quite possible that Greek as it is historically known transpired after a fusion between an Indo-European language, a Semitic language and/or maybe even another unrelated language.

Earlier in this thread I stated the following:

I will not refer to Mycenaean as 'Greek', because I am of the opinion that Mycenaean is an ancestor tongue and substratum of Greek that contributed to its vocabulary, but not 'Greek' as it has been historically known since the works of Homer.

I stand by the above and I find corroboration in what Chadwick has written also. The Greek language as it has been historically known was probably formed from about the 10th century BC in what came to be referred to as 'Hellas' - BUT IT WAS NOT 'Greek' to begin with, it only became so after a process of amalgamation between a Paleo-Balkan tongue and one or two other languages that were imported into the region by invaders and colonists.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 12-19-2010, 08:08 PM

Here is an interesting response to Chadwick's theories by a Philhellenic Frenchman. Apparently the Mycenaean era wasn't early enough, so they are trying to hark back even earlier. Although I don't agree with all that is written, it warrants being noted here as it is relevant to the discussion:

PHP Code:


[url]http://www.anistor.gr/english/enback/v013.htm[/url]

Since the decipherment of the Linear B script in 1952 and the resulting discovery of "Mycenaean Greek", the linguistic thinking has been dominated by the "Risch-Chadwick Theory" (hereafter : RC Theory). The influence of this theory, universally accepted thanks to John Chadwick's authority, has even governed archaeology. It has been impossible for archaeologists to advocate any reconstruction of the Greek Prehistory, which would be contrary to the Risch-Chadwick's linguistic basic hypothesis and its consequence: the Mycenaean dialect "is" the ancestor of all Greek dialects, except the West Greek ones, brought in by the Dorians at a late date. Therefore the Achaeans/Mycenaeans "have to be" the "First Greeks" into the Aegean". As a result, any written "pre-Mycenaean" artifact, like, for instance, the Phaistos Disk, "could not" be written in Greek. In the same way, as the Mycenaean Culture developed during the Late Bronze Age, a too remote date for "the Coming of the Greeks" had to be considered as "impossible". So, E. Grumach and S.Hood put it as late as 1200 BC and most other scholars dated it during the Middle Helladic period, until, under the pressure of the archaeological facts, the transitional period between E.H.II and E.H.III was suggested by J. Caskey. As J. Chadwick several times repeated it : "The Greek language arose through the mixture of a group of Indo-European speakers with an earlier population, and this group penetrated Greece at some time during the Middle Helladic or Early Helladic III period". (Chadwick 1975:819). This statement has long been considered as indisputable, and it is only recently that J. Coleman (2000), on the basis of the most recent archaeological findings, has proposed that the "Proto-Greeks" arrived from the north at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, in the later fourth millennium BC.
It is not our intention to evaluate the plausibility of those diverse archaeological theories. But we believe that the time has come to put an end to the dictatorship of the RC Theory by pointing out its weaknesses and its implausibility.

1)- A theory which disregards the ancient tradition

The first weakness of the RC Theory is its total disregard of the most ancient tradition. For all the ancient authors, the Ionians were "the first Greeks". There are no conflicting views about this among Herodotus, Strabon or Pausanias, although there is one concerning the origin of the Ionians. We will notice, in particular, that Herodotus - who call them "Pelasgoi" - established a link between the Ionians and the oldest inhabitants of the Cycladic Islands. He wrote : "The inhabitants of the islands ... were also a Pelasgic people. They were later called Ionians for the same reason as the Ionians who came from Athens.." (Herodotus VII,95).

The word "Pelasgoi" is important. Influenced by the RC Theory, and because the Pelasgoi were said to have been the first inhabitants of Greece, most modern scholars have considered the name as designing a "Pre-Greek" (and therefore "non-Greek") population. But the obvious link with "Pelagos" : "the open sea" leads us to think that the primitive meaning of the word must have been "seafarers", a good description indeed of the Cycladic people during the Early Bronze Age. The most natural guess coming from the Herodotus account is therefore that a)- the Ionians were "the first Greeks" b)- they were seafarers and came by sea c)- they were once settled in the Cycladic Islands, probably during the Early Bronze Age.

Instead of accepting this "natural guess", J. Chadwick, confronted with the ancient testimonies, preferred to state : "There is no doubt that the ancient authors described Ionians as located in the Peloponnese; but it may be doubted whether these people can be identified with speakers of an Ionic dialect..."(Chadwick 1975:814). A gratuitous statement, obviously generated by his linguistic theory...

2)- A theory which disregards the geographical data

The RC Theory essentially rests upon a study of the Greek Dialects. Before proceeding to a complete examination of the problem, it is interesting to remind the best established facts in this field. The classification of the Greek dialects into four groups (Ionic-Attic, Arkado-Cypriot, Aiolic and West Greek) has been universally accepted, as has also been agreed by all scholars that "Greek" (or at least its Indo European component) has been brought by "immigrants from the north". From where, is still a matter of discussion. But the most probable place seems to be in the Balkans, south of the Low Danubian Valley. A simple glanze at the repartition-map of the four dialectal groups suggests, then, to attribute this repartition to three (or four) " waves of immigrants" having followed the paths indicated on our Figure 1 (whatever the timing of their arrival) : one wave corresponding to the "Proto-Ionians" (later dialects : Attic-Ionic) -- one to the "Proto-Acheans" (later dialects : Arkado-Cypriot and Aiolic) - one to the "Proto-Dorians" (later dialects : West Greek).

It is interesting to notice here that this scheme, suggested by the repartition-map, is coherent with the preceding "educated guess." It suffices to suppose that the "Proto- Ionian wave" arrived first, at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age.

Is this "reasonable guess" accepted by the RC Theory ?.. Not at all ! The Risch-Chadwick theory reduces the number of "dialectal waves" to only two. A surprising decision, to say the least, considering the repartition-map !

Another strong geographical implausibility of the RC Theory comes from the comparison between Cypriot and Attic concerning their links with Mycenaean. If we accept that Attic shares very few features in common with Mycenaean (See hereafter), the situation is different with the Arkadian and Cypriot dialects. The links are there sufficient to let one believe in a common ancestor - the Mycenaean - c.1200 BC, i.e. at a time close to the end of the Mycenaean era. Hence a killing objection : how to explain, then, in the frame of the RC Theory, that after the disappearance of the Mycenaean World the Arkadian dialect remained closer to the far-away Cypriot than to the nearer Attic dialect ?..

3)- A theory based upon a single linguistic fact

One might believe that the RC Theory, which asserts that the Mycenaean has been the ancestor of the three dialectal groups : Attic-Ionic, Arkado-Cypriot and Aiolic, would have an indisputable basis. This is wrong. Taking into account the linguistic links between Mycenaean, on the one hand, and Arkado-Cypriot and Aiolic, on the other hand, considering that Mycenaean is half-the-way between a "Proto-Achean" going back to the Early Helladic, and these later dialects cannot be criticized. But things are completely different with Attic-Ionic. The features common to Mycenaean and Attic-Ionic can be classified into two categories : a)- those which are archaic remnants, and therefore cannot prove anything concerning an eventual kinship between both dialects. b)- those - the only significant ones - which are innovations in comparison with the "Common Greek". And, in fact, E. Risch himself has recognized that there is only one linguistic feature of this kind : the assibilation ti > si (E. Risch 1956:256-7) !..

Opposite to this unique argument, one has to mention the many difficulties, existing in the RC Theory :

a)- absence of explanation for a missing etymological digamma in many Mycenaean words, like i-da-i-jo, ki-ri-jo, ri-jo, rapte, o-no, etc.

b)- double and difficult-to-explain vocalization : or/ro and ar/ra

c)- implausible explanation of the later transformation of the labio-velar before the vowel e.

These difficulties are easily solved when one adopts the scheme suggested by the Ancient Tradition and the Geography : The absence of an etymological digamma, the a-vocalization, the exceptions to the "regular rule" that Mycenaean qe- has become pe- in its true dialectal descendents (Beotian pettares v. / Ionic tesseres), etc. can be explained as the influence of the "Proto-Ionians" , who coming by sea were the true "first Greeks".

**Soldier of Macedon** · 01-18-2011, 07:27 PM

Here's something from The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe, edited by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Page 237 – By the beginning of the thirteenth century the area which can be recognized as Mycenaean reached its fullest extent. It included Aetolia, coastal Thessaly and Mt. Olympus, the islands of the central and south-east Aegean as far as Rhodes, and south-west Asia Minor. It is likely that there were settlements on the coast of Chalcidike in Macedonia, but inland Macedonia, like Epirus and Thrace, preserved its own local identity.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 04-20-2011, 10:37 PM

There are some similarities between the Linear B script and that of the Dipsilio tablet:

Dispilio Pictures Kostur - Kastoria - Macedonian Truth Forum

http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5431

Wanted to share these pictures with you guys. Have you ever heard of this settlement ? The site appears to have been occupied over a long period, from the final stages of the Middle Neolithic (5600-5000 BC) to the Final Neolithic (3000 BC). A number of items were found, including ceramics, wooden structural elements, seeds,

And with other old European scripts, such as those from the Vinca Culture:

......finds were subsequently carbon-dated to before 4000 BCE, thirteen hundred years earlier than the date he expected, and earlier even than the writing systems of the Sumerians and Minoans. To date, more than a thousand fragments with similar inscriptions have been found on various archaeological sites throughout south-eastern Europe, notably in Greece (Dispilio Tablet), Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia, Romania, eastern Hungary, Moldova, and southern Ukraine.

Most of the inscriptions are on pottery, with the remainder appearing on whorls (flat cylindrical annuli), figurines, and a small collection of other objects. Over 85% of the inscriptions consist of a single symbol. The symbols themselves consist of a variety of abstract and representative pictograms, including zoomorphic (animal-like) representations, combs or brush patterns and abstract symbols such as swastikas, crosses and chevrons. Other objects include groups of symbols, of which some are arranged in no particularly obvious pattern, with the result that neither the order nor the direction of the signs in these groups is readily determinable. The usage of symbols varies significantly between objects: symbols that appear by themselves tend almost exclusively to appear on pots, while symbols that are grouped with other symbols tend to appear on whorls.

The importance of these findings lies in the fact that the bulk of the Vinča symbols was created in the period between 4500 and 4000 BC, with the ones on the Tărtăria clay tablets even dating back to around 5300 BC. This means that the Vinča finds predate the proto-Sumerian pictographic script from Uruk (modern Iraq), which is usually considered as the oldest known script, by more than a thousand years. Analyses of the symbols showed that they have little similarity with Near Eastern writing, leading to the view that these symbols and the Sumerian script probably arose independently. There are, however, some similarities between the Vinča signs and other Neolithic symbologies found elsewhere, as far afield as Egypt, Crete and even China, but scholars have suggested that such signs were produced by a convergent development of proto-writing which evolved independently in a number of societies.......

If the symbols are indeed a form of writing, then writing in the Danubian culture would far predate the earliest Sumerian cuneiform script or Egyptian hieroglyphs. They would thus be the world's earliest known form of writing. This claim remains controversial.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 04-27-2011, 02:06 AM

Some food for thought.

The introduction of the Phoenician script in Europe is another foreign element integrated into Balkan society during early antiquity. I found the wikipedia articles quite amusing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

When alphabetic writing began in Greece, the letterforms used were similar but not identical to the Phoenician ones and vowels were added, because the Phoenician Alphabet did not contain any vowels. There were also distinct variations of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how the Phoenician characters which did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were employed.

So the Greeks adopted a foreign alphabet that needed considerable adaptions and additions, yet, apparently, they made do just fine with Linear B prior to this point? The story crumbles from its inception.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

The Greek alphabet emerged in the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BC centuries after the fall of the Mycenaean civilization and consequent abandonment of its Linear B script, an early Greek writing system. Linear B is descended from Linear A, which was developed by the Minoans, whose language was probably unrelated to the Greek language; consequently the Minoan syllabary did not provide an ideal medium for the transliteration of the sounds of the Greek language.

If the Mycenaeans had no problem using Linear B and adapting Linear A syllabary, why would Greeks post 9th century BC? Perhaps because the ancient Hellenes were not direct descendants, either historically, culturally or linguistically, of the Mycenaeans.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 04-28-2011, 11:01 PM

An example of the Phoenician script. Some similarities with the Old European scripts cited previously can be noticed.

**Delodephius** · 05-01-2011, 08:04 AM

Originally posted by Soldier of Macedon View Post

There are some similarities between the Linear B script and that of the Dipsilio tablet:

Dispilio Pictures Kostur - Kastoria - Macedonian Truth Forum

http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5431

Wanted to share these pictures with you guys. Have you ever heard of this settlement ? The site appears to have been occupied over a long period, from the final stages of the Middle Neolithic (5600-5000 BC) to the Final Neolithic (3000 BC). A number of items were found, including ceramics, wooden structural elements, seeds,

And with other old European scripts, such as those from the Vinca Culture:

SoM, take a look at this:

Tărtăria tablet (~5500 BC)

Gradeshnitsa tablet (5th mil. BC)

Karanovo tablet (5th mil. BC)

Could it be that the Egyptian hieroglyphs originated in the Balkans, that when the agriculture began to spread into Europe a writing system was exported to Egypt? I once sent these images to an Egyptologist, I didn't tell him from where they were from or the period they were made, but after examining them he said they were not in the Egyptian language, at least not of any known period.

**Soldier of Macedon** · 05-01-2011, 09:30 PM

They all look like they share certain features and symbols, not only between each other but also with the Phoenician script to some degree. Is it possible that they all have a common Balkan ancestor, after which they have separated, altered, then influenced each other over time? Definetly worthy of further research. I think one of the main obstacles here is attributing accurate sound values to the symbols which were meant to represent letters. For example, if the word 'zab' (Macedonian for 'tooth') sounded like PIE 'gombh' 4,000 years ago, how would it have sounded 4,000 years prior to that?

**Carlin** · 12-08-2012, 08:06 PM

Lost Languages from the Mediterranean, By Jan G. P. Best

Lost Languages from the Mediterranean

http://books.google.ca/books?id=resUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA65&dq=Luwian+Greek&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zODDUJ7wBeTlyAHe9IDQDQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ

Page 52: "After the decipherment of Linear A in 1981, it is not difficult to see that the many Phoenician and Akkadian loanwords on the Linear B tablets from Knossos and other sites in the Greek mainland stem directly from the language of the Linear A tablets from Hagia Triada."

Page 53: "Linear A together with Linear B, Linear B together with Linear A, Phoenicians together with Greeks, Greeks together with Phoenicians: not exactly compatible with John Chadwick's pure Greek in Linear B."

**Nexus** · 02-03-2013, 10:50 AM

a translation from this news : http://www.lecourrierderussie.com/20.../#.UQwq0mclcYc

Anatolii Kozelski�: Before Babel, Proto-Slavic
Posted May 28, 2010 at 0:00

Academically speaking, Anatolii Kozelski� is not a linguist. Engineer by training, he has distinguished himself particularly in the role of chief project engineer in the construction of plants producing electric motors. But, having reached the age of retirement, he embarked on a second career, this time as a researcher. And he did not hesitate to venture into one of the fields that are most ungrateful: the study of the famous "Linear A", the writing system held the oldest ever known ancient Crete well before the onset of the Greek historical arena, whose first material evidence has been discovered by archaeologist Arthur Evans.

Tablets of Hagia Triada site, located in the south of Crete, are indeed the main source, but not the only materials available today for the study of "Linear A". It is Evans himself that we owe this seemingly arbitrary name. Not knowing what languages were written in the tablets found, he decided to call respectively "linear" A and B and the three types hieroglyphic writing which bore the trace. The choice is motivated, the first two being denotation systems syllabaries, and not purely ideogrammatic as the second oldest form of the three. Linear in the scriptures said Anatolii, signs take the value of the first syllable of the word for the object they represent, and have no function to designate the object in question. And these writings are linearized in two ways: the text has no form of a snail, but a series of successive lines, and signs are less stylized and designed by purification of the line, some resembling letters.

Khaltoura Anglo-Saxon

Officially, the Linear B was deciphered once and for all by the English architect Michael Ventris. His first works date back to 1952 and the final results of his research are recorded in a treatise published in 1955 he co-authored with John Chadwick, Hellenist, who helped him to continue his research. Linear B denote a dialect held an archaic form of ancient Greek, Mycenaean. The Linear A, which it derives, is however remained an enigma, despite the efforts of Hubert La Marle particular, taking the assumption "Indo-Iranian", in which language it denotes is not agglutinative, as was believed before him, but inflected.

Anatolii began his research much later, in 1994, and its conclusions are shocking: "In 100 years of research, we have come to nothing regarding the Linear A, but we have not succeeded in really decipher Linear B. Ventris and Chadwick were able to identify the signs and sentences, which they attribute to a language that resembles the ancient Greek. But how can we speak of "decoding" of a language you do not understand the meaning? They are not able to translate one text! Their fundamental mistake is having obstinately assume that it was a Greek dialect. All this, in Russian, is called the "khaltoura" from a botched. '

The term is violent. Anatolii but has his reasons: he has any other assumptions that allowed him to decipher the strong sense that he wants, he says, not only Linear A, but B. And his thesis is even more shocking: these two systems would denote not any Greek dialect, but an ancient dialect of the Russian language, a "proto-Slavic"! If he is right, the consequences are devastating: it is not only the basics of Philology linguistics research on the languages of antiquity that are undermined, but also of entire history.

Reminiscences proto-Slavic

Like all discoverers perhaps Anatolii was seized early by intuition. "I think there was a time in my youth decisive in the 1950s, the school I attended, we studied the ancient Greek myths and characters that inhabit: Icarus, Daedalus, Priam, Helen. And suddenly I thought: all those names, somehow sound very Russian. There is something hiding under there. Later, when the time comes, I will it all clear. I finally had to wait until they reach the age of retirement to work for me, there are now 16 years ago. '

To transform intuition in research track, he then consulted the works of recognized classics. It is among the first linguist, historian and traveler Aleksandr Chertkov (1789-1858) he found confirmation of his hypothesis in his wildest consequences. This specialist Slavic already stated, in the middle of the nineteenth century, one could find traces of a single strain "Russian" in the Greek settlements of Greece to the Balkans: the Pelasgians, who since been debated hectic pitting all kinds of ethno-political factors in these Balkans. But it was enough to know that slavophone people had haunted these lands before the Greeks to allow them to continue their research. Sinews of war, he bought a copy of the Code, but very rare inscriptions in Linear A, vol. 1, L. Godart and J-P. Olivier, until he consulted the form of micro-film to the Lenin Library. Finally, in 2003 he published at the author a collection of texts in Linear A translated by him, as the scriptures of ancient Slavic (Cr�te. Linear A) �, which includes all new materials which was used to establish its demonstration from Haghia Triada, but also from Pylos and Knossos.

Philological revolution?

The core of the discovery of a technical than its predecessors thought they could ignore. "In the Linear A, there are signs representing numbers from 1 to 9, in the form of vertical and horizontal lines aligned side by side. They have always been treated by researchers as numbers, and nothing else. But there are signs in this system mixed from "ligatures": they combine drawings of objects and bars denoting numbers, which gives a nonsense, a heterogeneous impossible to interpret. These include a sign that appears only once in all the texts available uninterpretable unless it is broken down into a drawing and a figure that they are very common. I realized that if the system is homogeneous, it could be in the ligatures that the meeting of syllabic signs all equally. In other words, signs representing numbers should not be interpreted in the context of a direct designation, but as representatives of the first syllable of the name of the figure. Basing myself on the presupposition of Chertkov that it was an archaic Russian language, I was able to establish equivalences and find the corresponding syllables: "edin" to 1 "chih" to 4, for example, first syllables of the old names of figures that make the texts fully interpretable. '

Therefore, the main task is to Anatolii systematically implement the method called acrophonic "From simplified drawings which are made signs, I had to rebuild the objects designated, and from there, find the name that was given to them Russian archaic to isolate the first syllable. I studied 50 characters in this way, trying to intuitively what they looked like in the familiar environment of the speakers. For example, a drawing in a very stylized teeth zouby Russian, took the syllabic value "zou". "The famous Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language living Vladimir Dal will become, at this stage of the quest names, an inexhaustible source.

But it is the exercise of translation remains the touchstone. "Intuitively, it is easy to identify the pronunciation of syllables and associating meanings, but much less cut texts signs. Based on the study of 50 texts, I was able to discern syllabic signs 1000. And, depending on the theoretical presuppositions that I learned, I was able to show that the fundamental roots of the language in which they are written at the same time playing the role of the verb and noun. These findings are confirmed in semantic, translation, and aurally, through compliance with the laws of evolution of language. "Anatolii asserts that his work meets current scientific validation:" The verification process includes multiple levels, the logic of the proposal, the theme of the text and its relation to the whole of which it is part. And my method meets the basic criteria in linguistics: it shows that the inscriptions are examined texts, that is to say, the expression of a specific phenomenon such as language, and that language can be identified as the Russian antique. "It is certainly disturbing that most of the translated texts relate to a single register: it is practical advice addressed to young people, sometimes set in a quasi-poetic, half-way between the aphorism Heraclitean and Japanese haiku. "Do scrape places tender to release the winds," and advocates such fragment. Ronsard lovers may be disappointed, but the path of science is rarely decorated with roses.

Passion for ignorance?

In September 2000, Sofia, qu'Anatoli� to risk a first presentation of research results. The reception is very positive. His collection in 2003, and since republished enriched, is used in the ancient history faculties of several universities, St. Petersburg, Kazan and Voronezh. It does not go well on the side of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "This is a blow to several institutes, linguistics, Russian language, history of antiquity. To their resistance, I made this argument elementary: "In the courts, it reopens the files on the basis of new hardware. "They prefer to be convinced that everything has already been said, even when the received theory does not take into account the new materials on which I worked. And they avoid writing anything on the subject, for fear of confrontation. In particular, I contacted the Slavic Research Institute of the Academy in Moscow, after which its name is supposed to deal with the history of the Slavs. But their reaction was very negative, because my discovery casts a shadow on their classifications. All that I have to know is that my work has been discussed by specialists of the institute, and they decided to declare "anti-scientific" and not mention anywhere, without further explanation. '

This policy of silence creates a situation detrimental, which does not facilitate the dissemination of research Anatolii. "The problem is that to publish my work other than the author's, I have to get a grant, and that it is precisely the director of the institute decided to ignore that decides . "But he continues to work tirelessly, waiting serenely other researchers are joining their efforts with his. And, according to him, the site is huge.

Simon Roblin
1 A French version of the preface, translated by Velichka Ivanova is available. Contact the author at kronov79 [at] mail.ru

**momce** · 02-03-2013, 11:01 AM

This could be groundbreaking research work it would change our entire notions of the "ancient world". For me the greatest find is that there was no common proto-hellenic language.

Linear B and the Mycenaean language

Linear B and the Mycenaean language

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