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The Minoans, on the island of Crete, used a form of writing known as “Linear A Script”. This form of communication has apparently never been deciphered. Tell me – why do you think that a super-complex Nazi code could be broken during WWII but we can't decipher something which is 3000+ years old? Surely we have enough knowledge and know-how to understand extremely difficult means of communication. Why is this one different?
The allies had something to work with, with the Enigma machine. We had a machine but didn't know the key, that just took some time to acquire. As far as the Linear A, we only have the end result and nothing to compare it to. Heck for several languages we didn't understand them until we discovered the Rosetta Stone which gave us something to compare to.
There is no way to extract context from the writings as was said above. It's like looking into a pattern without knowing what the pattern is supposed to be of and having no other pattern similar to compare to it.
It just seems like determining how man in a much more primitive state was communicating shouldn't be so difficult to crack. It's not like they were trying to deceive anyone with it. I also imagine there are only so many ways to approach a logical form of written communication. Evidently easier said that done.
Why is this one different?
I think, as far as the Enigma Code goes, there was enough historical documentation (and more spies) about the Nazis and that allowed us to figure it out. With Linear A there were minimal, at most, records of anything nevermind something as complex as langauge. The only thing we have to go on is archeological finds.What about the Mycenaean Linear B? How was that determined to be Greek, even though it was lost or no record of being used for the next 500 years or so?
