nice find. I wonder if machine learning can be used to reconstruct the language behind Linear A. Similar symbols should represent similar phonemes. we should be able to determine what language family we are dealing with, at least, and if the language is inflected.
Identify words and grammatical structure. It’s not like there are spaces, and inflected languages change the ending of words. Even with a small set documents this must be incredibly difficult when you don’t know what the words are. Similarities with Semitic cuneiform phoneme order would probably be easier to recognize by machine
The latest research suggests Linear A and Linear B is the same script, but used for different languages analogous to how the Latin script is both used for say English and Polish, but with language specific adjustments.
"The extant corpus, comprising some 1,427 specimens totalling 7,362 to 7,396 signs, if scaled to standard type, would fit easily on two sheets of paper."
What's the point of using ML to process two pages of text? It's well within human scale, and humans can infer things better.
While that is true, it's not necessarily an advantage; you do see the claim that the decipherment of Linear B is entirely spurious, a product of the decipherers' imaginations.
There are ancient forms found in Linear B that have to be preserved in some sections of the Iliad to preserve the dactylic hexameter, like wanax. This gives more credence to a continuity of the Greek language from the Mycenaean Bronze Age
Those are forms we knew about before we knew anything about Linear B; they are not independently evidence that we are reading the Linear B correctly. When you hallucinate material, it's not surprising that you hallucinate something you're already familiar with.
It's even less surprising in a context like this, where a proposal that "this is Bronze Age Greek!" is more or less required to include reconstructed Bronze Age forms. Who's going to take it seriously otherwise?
I taught myself linear b one summer - it was a hard slog, as although the characters are clearly motivated (ie simplified pictures, presumably acrophonic) there are a lot of them and it's in most cases not clear what they are of - and even if it were, it wouldn't be much use to you as the language is unfamiliar anyway. If current theories are correct and the characters have the same values as in linear a, and linear a is not Greek, then the Mycenaean scribes would have had similar struggles learning the script as I did, which increases my respect for them!
Off topic but this is a very weird coincidence for me since I had just randomly started watching a 1970s documentary about Crete on Netflix which talks about Linear A and B.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 47.1 ms ] threadThis is an insight well within the means of any humans working on Linear A. What would machine learning add?
"The extant corpus, comprising some 1,427 specimens totalling 7,362 to 7,396 signs, if scaled to standard type, would fit easily on two sheets of paper."
What's the point of using ML to process two pages of text? It's well within human scale, and humans can infer things better.
While that is true, it's not necessarily an advantage; you do see the claim that the decipherment of Linear B is entirely spurious, a product of the decipherers' imaginations.
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27191899
It's even less surprising in a context like this, where a proposal that "this is Bronze Age Greek!" is more or less required to include reconstructed Bronze Age forms. Who's going to take it seriously otherwise?
Is there no evidence of similar place names in Linear A and B?