This item is important for acouple of reasons. Firstly itestablishes the Mycenaean period in Greece Mediterranean .
This ‘empire’ had its capitalnear Gibraltar in order to control traffic into the Mediterranean . It drew metals from the Americas high point of the palace culture coincides with the era of maximum activity in the Americas
As posted earlier, such a cultureneeded a written trade script. Thisobviously is it.
Trade also drove the creation ofa Celtic script known as Ogam which is suitable for writing on bark and woodboards.
The important take home is that:
1 Evidencekeeps drifting in support of the conjecture and is actually widening thegeographical scope.
2 TheAtlantean high point ran from 1600 BC through1159 BC and Mycenae and Athens and most other ancient foundations in the Eastern Mediterranean became part of the Atlantean palace culture operatedprimarily by European Celts.
It is actually startling just howfar-flung and well established this ‘empire’ was and it compares well to theBritish Empire and was certainly on the same track when it collapsed in 1159with the Hekla blast and tsunami.
Ancient Tablet Found: Oldest Readable Writing in Europe
Found at a site tied to myth, Greek tablet survived only by accident,experts say.
Main Content
Names and numbers fill the back (pictured) of the tablet fragment,found last summer in Greece
Photograph courtesy Christian Mundigler
Ker Than
Published March 30, 2011
Marks on a clay tablet fragment found in Greece arethe oldest known decipherable text in Europe ,a new study says.
Considered "magical or mysterious" in its time, the writingsurvives only because a trash heap caught fire some 3,500 years ago, accordingto researchers.
Found in an olive grove in what's now the village of Iklaina (map), the tablet was created by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C., archaeologists say.
The Mycenaeans—made legendary in part by Homer's Iliad, whichfictionalizes their war with Troy—dominated much of Greece from about 1600 B.C.to 1100 B.C. (See "Is Troy True?The Evidence Behind Movie Myth.")
So far, excavations at Iklaina have yielded evidence of an earlyMycenaean palace, giant terrace walls, murals, and a surprisingly advanceddrainage system, according to dig director MichaelCosmopoulos.
But the tablet, found last summer, is the biggest surprise of themultiyear project, Cosmopoulos said.
"According to what we knew, that tablet should not have beenthere," the University of Missouri-St. Louis
First, Mycenaean tablets weren't thought to have been created so early,he said. Second, "until now tablets had been found only in a handful ofmajor palaces"—including the previous record holder, which was found amongpalace ruins in what was the city of Mycenae
Although the Iklaina site boasted a palace during the early Mycenaeanperiod, by the time of the tablet, the settlement had been reduced to asatellite of the city of Pylos
"This is a rare case where archaeology meets ancient texts andGreek myths," Cosmopoulos said in a statement.
Tablet Preserved by Cooking
The markings on the tablet fragment—which is roughly 1 inch ( 2.5centimeters) tall by 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) wide—are early examples of awriting system known as Linear B.
Used for a very ancient form of Greek, Linear B consisted of about 87signs, each representing one syllable. (Related: "NewLayer of Ancient Greek Writings Detected in Medieval Book.")
The Mycenaeans appear to have used Linear B to record only economicmatters of interest to the ruling elite. Fittingly, the markings on the frontof the Iklaina tablet appear to form a verb that relates to manufacturing, theresearchers say. The back lists names alongside numbers—probably a propertylist.
Because these records tended to be saved for only a single fiscal year,the clay wasn't made to last, said Cosmopoulos, whose work was funded in partby the National Geographic Society's Committeefor Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)
"Those tablets were not baked, only dried in the sun and [were],therefore, very brittle. ... Basically someone back then threw the tablet inthe pit and then burned their garbage," he said. "This fire hardenedand preserved the tablet."
Not the Oldest Writing
While the Iklaina tablet is an example of the earliest writing systemin Europe, other writing is much older, explained Classics professor Thomas Palaima,who wasn't involved in the study, which is to be published in the April issueof the journal Proceedings of the Athens
For example, writings found in China ,Mesopotamia, and Egypt
Linear B itself is thought to have descended from an older, stillundeciphered writing system known as Linear A. And archeologists think Linear Ais related to the older hieroglyph system used by the ancient Egyptians.
Magical, Mysterious Writing
Still, the Iklaina tablet is an "extraordinary find," saidPalaima, an expert in Mycenaean tablets and administration at the University ofTexas-Austin.
In addition to its sheer age, the artifact could provide insights abouthow ancient Greek kingdoms were organized and administered, he added.
For example, archaeologists previously thought such tablets werecreated and kept exclusively at major state capitals, or "palatialcenters," such as Pylos and Mycenae
Found in the ruins of a second-tier town, the Iklaina tablet couldindicate that literacy and bureaucracy during the late Mycenaean period wereless centralized than previously thought.
Palaima added that the ability to read and write was extremelyrestricted during the Mycenaean period and was regarded by most people as"magical or mysterious."
It would be some 400 to 600 years before the written word wasdemystified in Greece
From Wikipedia we have thefollowing:
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, anearly form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet byseveral centuries (ca. 13th but perhaps as early as 17th century BC, see Kafkania pebble) andseems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaeancivilization.Most clay tablets inscribed in Linear B were found in Knossos, Cydonia,[1] Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae.[2] Thesucceeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages,provides no evidence of the use of writing.
The script appears related to Linear A, an undecipheredearlier script used for writing the Minoan language, and the later Cypriot syllabary,which recorded Greek. Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and a largerepertory of semantographic signs. These ideograms or "signifying"signs stand for objects or commodities, but do not have phonetic value and arenever used as word signs in writing a sentence.
The application of Linear B seems to have been confined toadministrative contexts. In all the thousands of clay tablets, a relativelysmall number of different "hands" have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast ofthe Peloponnese, insouthern Greece) and 66in Knossos(Crete).[3] From thisfact it could be thought that the script was used only by some sort of guild ofprofessional scribes who served the central palaces. Once the palaces weredestroyed, the script disappeared.
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