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John Chadwick: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from John Chadwick, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• An architect with no linguistics training deciphered a lost Bronze Age script

  Linear B, used in Bronze Age Greece around 1450-1200 BC, resisted decipherment for 50 years after its 1900 discovery. Building on classicist Alice Kober's grid analysis of the sign…

  — Michael Ventris & John Chadwick, Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives

• Its sister script was cracked in 1952 — this one still can't be read

  Linear A was used by the Minoan civilization on Bronze Age Crete centuries before the related Linear B script was adapted to write Mycenaean Greek. Linear B was famously deciphered…

  — John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B

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