0:00:06.600,0:00:09.630
In the early 1900s on the island of Crete,

0:00:09.630,0:00:14.172
British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans [br]uncovered nearly 3,000 tablets

0:00:14.172,0:00:16.662
inscribed with strange symbols.

0:00:16.662,0:00:19.432
He thought these symbols represented[br]the language spoken

0:00:19.432,0:00:21.922
by Europe’s oldest civilization.

0:00:21.922,0:00:25.922
Their meaning would elude scholars [br]for 50 years.

0:00:25.922,0:00:29.213
Evans discovered these tablets [br]amid the colorful frescoes

0:00:29.213,0:00:32.853
and maze-like hallways[br]of the palace of Knossos.

0:00:32.853,0:00:35.403
He called the civilization Minoan—

0:00:35.403,0:00:38.783
after the mythical Cretan ruler, [br]King Minos.

0:00:38.783,0:00:43.339
He thought the script, dubbed Linear B,[br]represented the Minoan language,

0:00:43.339,0:00:47.346
and scholars all over the world [br]came up with their own theories.

0:00:47.346,0:00:49.936
Was it the lost language of the Etruscans?

0:00:49.936,0:00:53.396
Or perhaps it represented [br]an early form of Basque?

0:00:53.396,0:00:57.396
The mystery intensified because Evans[br]guarded the tablets closely––

0:00:57.396,0:01:01.056
only 200 of the inscriptions [br]were published during his lifetime––

0:01:01.056,0:01:03.356
but he couldn’t decipher the script.

0:01:03.356,0:01:07.236
However, he did make [br]two accurate observations:

0:01:07.236,0:01:11.356
the tablets were administrative records,[br]and the script was a syllabary,

0:01:11.356,0:01:14.806
where each symbol represented [br]both a consonant and a vowel,

0:01:14.806,0:01:18.396
mixed with characters [br]that each represented a whole word.

0:01:18.396,0:01:23.726
Evans worked on Linear B for three decades[br]before a scholar from Brooklyn, New York,

0:01:23.726,0:01:27.246
named Alice Kober [br]set out to solve the mystery.

0:01:27.246,0:01:30.446
Kober was a professor [br]of Classics at Brooklyn College

0:01:30.446,0:01:33.496
when few women held such positions.

0:01:33.496,0:01:36.896
To help in her quest, she taught herself[br]many languages––

0:01:36.896,0:01:40.226
knowledge she knew she would need [br]to decipher Linear B.

0:01:40.226,0:01:43.936
For the next two decades, [br]she analyzed the symbols.

0:01:43.936,0:01:46.436
Working from the few [br]available inscriptions,

0:01:46.436,0:01:49.466
she recorded how often [br]each symbol appeared.

0:01:49.466,0:01:53.266
Then she recorded how frequently [br]each symbol appeared next to another.

0:01:53.266,0:01:56.686
She stored her findings on scrap paper [br]in cigarette cartons

0:01:56.686,0:02:00.396
because writing supplies were scarce [br]during the Second World War.

0:02:00.396,0:02:02.156
By analyzing these frequencies,

0:02:02.156,0:02:05.246
she discovered that Linear B [br]relied on word endings

0:02:05.246,0:02:07.146
to give its sentences grammar.

0:02:07.146,0:02:11.246
From this she began to build a chart [br]of the relations between the signs,

0:02:11.246,0:02:15.246
coming closer than anyone before [br]to deciphering Linear B.

0:02:15.246,0:02:20.930
But she died, probably of cancer, [br]in 1950 at the age of 43.

0:02:20.930,0:02:23.530
While Kober was analyzing [br]the Knossos tablets,

0:02:23.530,0:02:28.230
an architect named Michael Ventris [br]was also working to crack Linear B.

0:02:28.230,0:02:33.390
He had become obsessed with Linear B[br]as a schoolboy after hearing Evans speak.

0:02:33.390,0:02:37.986
He even worked on deciphering [br]the script while serving in World War II.

0:02:37.986,0:02:40.976
After the war, Ventris [br]built on Kober’s grid

0:02:40.976,0:02:44.216
using a newly published cache [br]of Linear B inscriptions

0:02:44.216,0:02:49.499
excavated from a different archeological[br]site called Pylos, on mainland Greece.

0:02:49.499,0:02:52.909
His real breakthrough came [br]when he compared the tablets from Pylos

0:02:52.909,0:02:54.509
with those from Knossos

0:02:54.509,0:02:59.642
and saw that certain words appeared on[br]tablets from one site but not the other.

0:02:59.642,0:03:02.792
He wondered if those words represented[br]the names of places

0:03:02.792,0:03:05.262
specific to each location.

0:03:05.262,0:03:09.092
He knew that over centuries, place names[br]tend to remain constant,

0:03:09.092,0:03:10.792
and decided to compare Linear B

0:03:10.792,0:03:14.586
to an ancient syllabary [br]from the island of Cyprus.

0:03:14.586,0:03:18.536
The Cypriot script was used [br]hundreds of years after Linear B,

0:03:18.536,0:03:20.596
but some of the symbols were similar—

0:03:20.596,0:03:23.346
he wondered if the sounds [br]would be similar, too.

0:03:23.346,0:03:26.526
When Ventris plugged some of the sounds [br]of the Cypriot syllabary

0:03:26.526,0:03:28.426
into the Linear B inscriptions,

0:03:28.426,0:03:30.616
he came up with the word Knossos,

0:03:30.616,0:03:34.416
the name of the city where Evans [br]had discovered his tablets.

0:03:34.416,0:03:37.796
In a domino effect, [br]Ventris unraveled Linear B,

0:03:37.796,0:03:41.441
with each word revealing more clearly [br]that the language of Linear B

0:03:41.441,0:03:44.221
was not Minoan, but Greek.

0:03:44.221,0:03:48.740
Ventris died in a car crash four years [br]later, at the age of 34.

0:03:48.740,0:03:52.400
But his discovery rewrote [br]a chapter of history.

0:03:52.400,0:03:55.900
Evans had insisted that the Minoans [br]conquered the mainland Greeks,

0:03:55.900,0:03:59.390
and that was why examples of Linear B [br]were found on the mainland.

0:03:59.390,0:04:03.130
But the discovery that Linear B [br]represented Greek, and not Minoan,

0:04:03.130,0:04:05.130
showed that the opposite had happened:

0:04:05.130,0:04:10.239
mainland Greeks invaded Crete and adopted[br]the Minoan script for their own language.

0:04:10.239,0:04:12.689
But the story isn’t over yet.

0:04:12.689,0:04:14.889
The actual language of the Minoans,

0:04:14.889,0:04:17.839
represented by another script [br]called Linear A,

0:04:17.839,0:04:19.879
has yet to be deciphered.

0:04:19.879,0:04:23.302
It remains a mystery—[br]at least for now.