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In the early 1900s on the island of Crete,

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British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans 
uncovered nearly 3,000 tablets

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inscribed with strange symbols.

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He thought these symbols represented
the language spoken

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by Europe’s oldest civilization.

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Their meaning would elude scholars 
for 50 years.

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Evans discovered these tablets 
amid the colorful frescoes

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and maze-like hallways
of the palace of Knossos.

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He called the civilization Minoan—

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after the mythical Cretan ruler, 
King Minos.

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He thought the script, dubbed Linear B,
represented the Minoan language,

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and scholars all over the world 
came up with their own theories.

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Was it the lost language of the Etruscans?

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Or perhaps it represented 
an early form of Basque?

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The mystery intensified because Evans
guarded the tablets closely––

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only 200 of the inscriptions 
were published during his lifetime––

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but he couldn’t decipher the script.

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However, he did make 
two accurate observations:

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the tablets were administrative records,
and the script was a syllabary,

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where each symbol represented 
both a consonant and a vowel,

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mixed with characters 
that each represented a whole word.

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Evans worked on Linear B for three decades
before a scholar from Brooklyn, New York,

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named Alice Kober 
set out to solve the mystery.

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Kober was a professor 
of Classics at Brooklyn College

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when few women held such positions.

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To help in her quest, she taught herself
many languages––

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knowledge she knew she would need 
to decipher Linear B.

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For the next two decades, 
she analyzed the symbols.

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Working from the few 
available inscriptions,

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she recorded how often 
each symbol appeared.

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Then she recorded how frequently 
each symbol appeared next to another.

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She stored her findings on scrap paper 
in cigarette cartons

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because writing supplies were scarce 
during the Second World War.

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By analyzing these frequencies,

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she discovered that Linear B 
relied on word endings

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to give its sentences grammar.

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From this she began to build a chart 
of the relations between the signs,

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coming closer than anyone before 
to deciphering Linear B.

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But she died, probably of cancer, 
in 1950 at the age of 43.

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While Kober was analyzing 
the Knossos tablets,

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an architect named Michael Ventris 
was also working to crack Linear B.

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He had become obsessed with Linear B
as a schoolboy after hearing Evans speak.

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He even worked on deciphering 
the script while serving in World War II.

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After the war, Ventris 
built on Kober’s grid

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using a newly published cache 
of Linear B inscriptions

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excavated from a different archeological
site called Pylos, on mainland Greece.

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His real breakthrough came 
when he compared the tablets from Pylos

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with those from Knossos

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and saw that certain words appeared on
tablets from one site but not the other.

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He wondered if those words represented
the names of places

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specific to each location.

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He knew that over centuries, place names
tend to remain constant,

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and decided to compare Linear B

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to an ancient syllabary 
from the island of Cyprus.

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The Cypriot script was used 
hundreds of years after Linear B,

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but some of the symbols were similar—

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he wondered if the sounds 
would be similar, too.

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When Ventris plugged some of the sounds 
of the Cypriot syllabary

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into the Linear B inscriptions,

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he came up with the word Knossos,

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the name of the city where Evans 
had discovered his tablets.

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In a domino effect, 
Ventris unraveled Linear B,

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with each word revealing more clearly 
that the language of Linear B

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was not Minoan, but Greek.

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Ventris died in a car crash four years 
later, at the age of 34.

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But his discovery rewrote 
a chapter of history.

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Evans had insisted that the Minoans 
conquered the mainland Greeks,

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and that was why examples of Linear B 
were found on the mainland.

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But the discovery that Linear B 
represented Greek, and not Minoan,

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showed that the opposite had happened:

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mainland Greeks invaded Crete and adopted
the Minoan script for their own language.

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But the story isn’t over yet.

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The actual language of the Minoans,

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represented by another script 
called Linear A,

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has yet to be deciphered.

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It remains a mystery—
at least for now.