Linear B is Greek
An architect deciphers a Bronze Age script and finds Greek five hundred years early.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 250 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Michael Ventris, an architect working from Alice Kober's statistical groundwork, showed in 1952 that Linear B records an archaic form of Greek — not the unknown language everyone expected. The tablets are inventories: chariot wheels, sheep, perfumed oil, rations, offerings to gods including Zeus, Poseidon and Dionysus. They prove Greek speakers ran the Mycenaean palaces and push the documented history of the language back centuries.