Welcome to Litsy!

A story of the decipherment of Linear B - a script from the (then) earliest known European civilization first found on Crete. Fox discusses archaeologist Arthur Evans, who found the tablets, and Michael Ventris an architect and amateur linguist, who ultimately deciphered the script. But Fox's main interest lies with the largely overlooked Brooklyn born classicist Alice Kober whose painstaking and meticulous work laid the groundwork.

5/5⭐ An incredibly engaging, fascinating story of the players involved in deciphering Linear B. The book explains well key linguistic, archaeological, historical, and cultural principles. I am so glad to have learned of the force-of-will that was Alice Kober. #bookspinbingo #booked2022

#rockinmay #immigrantsong Did you know that most of the groundwork for deciphering Linear B was done by an immigrant? Alice Kober's parents immigrated to the US when her mother was pregnant with Alice. Alice grew up to be a brilliant classicist whose methodical work of several years went most of the way toward figuring out Linear B. She died young, so someone else cracked it and got the credit. ☹️️ But her groundwork was essential to the solution.

Currently reading this for a group read in #srcspring2017. Fellow word nerds, it is fascinating. It's about cracking the code of ancient Cretan Linear B script. It's been on my want-to-read list for a couple of years. So glad to be prodded into reading it now.

How little academia has changed....