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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

> sheds light on how the ancient Minoan and Mycenaean elite

Mycenaeans are considered Greek.

Minoans generally not considered Greek.

Their script, Linear A, has never been deciphered, so we don’t actually know what language they spoke, but most linguists think it wasn’t Greek, based on how poorly Linear A’s signs map onto Greek phonetics when tested as they do successfully with Mycenaean Linear B.

Culturally the Minoans also look distinct from later Greek civilization. Different religious iconography (bull-leaping, goddess-centric imagery), different art style, no clear warrior-elite hierarchy the way Mycenaean and later Greek society had.

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The actual paper doesn't claim that, it understands they are two distinct cultures but itn covers the georgaphical Greece in the title not cultural.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...

> Mycenaeans are considered Greek

It's fair to argue they aren't. The Assyrian people still exist [1] today. Their language and culture having been passed on-unbroken–by the living to the living for thousands of years.

The Myceneans–like the Hittites and others whom we know so little about we haven't even named them–are in a fundamentally distinct category. Like yes, they weren't nuked out of existence. But there is a permanent and irreparable break in the continuity of exchange that severs the timeline between then and now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrians

Mycenaeans are not remotely like the Hittites. The Mycenaean language is what turned into Greek, while Hittite died out and was forgotten. Myceneans were remembered and celebrated until the present day with the Odyssey and the Illiad (while I realise these were composed later, and are not a remotely perfect reflection of Mycenean society, they still refer to a memory of that time, and furthermore include authentic details from that time). The language and culture of the Mycenaeans also had an unbroken linguistic and cultural chain (of course with the big upheaval of the Bronze age collapse, but Assyrians also went through many upheavals).

Modern day Assyrians also speak Aramaic (or Arabic) rather than Akkadian which was the state language of the Assyrian empire (Aramaic did replace Akkadian as the lingua franca under the Neo-Assyrian empire however). Conversely, Greek is the descendant of Mycenaean Greek just as Coptic is the descendant of the Ancient Egyptian language.

Mycenaeans really are not like the Hittites who were essentially completely forgotten until 19th and 20th century archeology discovered them.

> Their script, Linear A, has never been deciphered

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600107

I read it. The claim is still early and yet to be accepted.

That was only a blog post about a secret draft that has not been published, nor peer reviewed. Let's classify it as "unconfirmed".

+1. Tom Di Mino hasn't posted anything on https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7471395... since June, nor has Stephen Kosloff posted anything more on https://aiclambake.com/clamtakes/ . I wouldn't expect any updates on that story.

As for Linear A decipherment claims, claiming decipherment isn't the same as decipherment. For example, here's a claim from 2014 that Linear A encodes spoken Japanese: https://konosos.net/2014/12/09/the-phonetic-method-in-linear... Does Linear A encode spoken Japanese? of course not.

Linear B also maps poorly to Greek as far as I know. It's clearly an adaption of a foreign script.

Linear B maps onto Greek quite well once you understand that it is a syllabary, not an alphabet. The fit is imperfect in specific, well-understood ways.

Once you correct for well-understood systematic gaps, though, the underlying grammar, vocabulary, and even some divine names (Poseidon, Zeus, Hera, Dionysus all show up) are recognizably continuous with classical Greek.

It is flat out Greek. I can even read some of the transliterations. I laughed like a drain when I saw that one of the leading characteristic key words of Aristotle's teaching, 'heneka' is the main connector in the oldest written Indo European text. three goats heneka one coat , i.e. 'for the sake of' in the context of a list of palace exchanges.

Except it does partially map into Greek, they had settlements on several Greek islands, influence on the Cyclades, and talk about similar Gods.

Even the cave where Zeus was allegedly born is on Crete.

They can heavily influence later Greek culture without being Greeks themselves. It's not unlike the Etruscans and Rome.

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