The race to decode a mysterious language - Susan Lupack
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2020
- Dig into the mysterious Linear B symbols, found on ancient tablets on the island of Crete, which took scholars nearly 50 years to decode.
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In the early 1900s, archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans uncovered nearly 3,000 tablets inscribed with strange symbols. He thought the script, dubbed Linear B, represented the Minoan language, while others came up with their own theories. Was it the lost language of the Etruscans? Or an early form of Basque? Its meaning would elude scholars for 50 years. Susan Lupack explores the mysterious inscriptions.
Lesson by Susan Lupack, directed by Movult.
Educator's website: bit.ly/SusanLupack
Animator's website: www.movult.com/
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View full lesson: ed.ted.com/lessons/the-race-t...
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Moral of the story: if you don't wanna die soon then don't mess with linear B.
Agreed. Even Tin Tin (2:28) didn't make it
Lol bro😂
Are you from bihar too?
@@acmiguens well u are right! He looks like Tintin. Even this reporter/detective didn't make it😂
@@shriyanshranjan4710 yup! U too? Nice to meet you 🤗
She: Why don't you get my signs?
Her signs:
🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂😂
TedEd understands humour 😁
🤣
This is so underrated
I was wondering now , how many historians are gonna dedicate their life to solving this 2nd puzzle . 🤔
Dont have to be an academic historian to solve these sort of puzzles. Sometimes, ordinary people just happen to make the break from other puzzles in other fields
Sad
*lives
i think the langauge made them dedicate their lifes fullly since they all died early
@Anon i see where are you coming from...
*You thought you had discovered a completely new language, but it was ME! GREEK!*
Is that a Rosetta Stone reference?
Pretty sure it's the "It was me, Dio!" meme that went viral some weeks/months ago
There is nothing new under the sun
AYAYAYAYAAYAYA
ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA
Hats off to the scholars and linguists who devoted their time and efforts in deciphering some of our ancient languages. While it's true that for some of these ancient scripts there were records inscribed on manuscripts together with known languages that aided in translation (e.g., the Rosetta Stone and the Behistun Rock), the labor to actually perform the linguistic analysis is still intensive. I hope through research and mathematics, we can improve our linguistic tools even further and, we can finally decode other languages such as those in the ancient writings in Mohenjo-Daro as well as the bewildering Voynich manuscript.
Well written 👏
Actually there are many people in my city's University trying to decode Indus script
I believe that linguistics is the perfect field to test and apply AI.
But not just for deciphering dead systems, but to unveil the patterns that structure still spoken yet dying languages of today, before it's too late.
I beg for someone to puts hands onto it!.
@@JesusSanchez-ul1qq Search wikitongue. I don't know if a.i. can create miracles. I think this can help.
@@JesusSanchez-ul1qq Thats a really good insight for using AI
🌎🇬🇷 👨🚀"Wait it's all Greek?" 🔫👨🚀"Always has been"
Underrated comment
Lol
@Mirzə no
Mirzə No, and frankly, I don’t care what it says unless you decipher it yourself
Ah a fellow memologist I see 🧐
When you’re trying to read through your class notes:
Oof😂
I was studying Computer Science back in school where we had to draw circuits with Logic Gates and it felt like The Matrix when I was flipping through my notes.
happy.thoughts-Ack! (Still Ack! decades later...😱)
“Language is the foundation of civilization. It is a glue that holds people together, and it is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.”
Well my first weapon are my legs though
@@saroj3462 were your enemies ants?
Arrival, I watched it 2 days back.
Language opens perspectives, it rewires our brains. 💯
@@reuzohvestioridecan1125 Nah I cut people's leg and use them as weapon
@@pragatheeseswaran7023 languages are made for communication. There is no point in learning languages. Most of the time they are useless
Imagine how many language have died and never discovered
Yeah that's right
@IdkGoodName Vilius how do you ascertain that?
@IdkGoodName Vilius hM
@@deepstariaenigmatica2601 We can guess that because of so-called *"killer languages"* : simply check out the *world's top 25 languages* , and almost all of them *developped and grew through war and conquest* , and ultimate *destruction of other societies and their native tongues.*
Most of them would be a good guess, since languages in pre-literate societies tend to be very small. There must have been thousands of languages spoken by small tribes that went extinct as these tribes were conquered or mixed into other peoples.
Deciphering an ancient writing really opens a window to lost cultures and civilizations, but there will come a time that our way of writing will be someday undecipherable and there will be people that will decipher it
That's intriguing
I think because we have pictured dictionaries created for kids, it won't be as hard as Linear B.
@@taygrcikifeys9736 You are right.
I think this is unlikely because now we have technology that is far superior in preserving and spread the information, unless a meteor hit earth and reset our civilazation
Well advanced and great civilizations tends to have a tragic end, while some survive to this day but others only left remnants only to be solved for many years. So I guess it will depend on how will it work out in the future.
Ancient scripts are very confusing. It's all Greek to me.
Cringe
Cringe
@@insellarplays2445 why ? EXPLAIN
The humour in this 😂
It's an English humour. "It's all Greek to me" means it is very difficult to understand
What a legend, learning multiple languages just to decode one mysterious one. I can't even speak my own language fluently
i cant even make noises
Being a software engineer, I was particularly thrilled when while reading about Linear B I found out the the word for "data" (de-do-me-na) has remained unaltered for 3.000+ years, from Mycenaean to Modern Greek.
It was an infusion of ancient Greek into common speaking language after the Greek Independence to get rid of Turkish and other foreign words from the common Greek. The Italian "Gazetta" was replaced by "Εφημερίδα". Some words like "περιθωράκιον" never made it and we still use the word "γιλέκο" . I believe this is how the word "δεδομένα" was reintroduced in Greek. My favorite thing about Linear B is that all we have are practically spreadsheets of things and people indicative that these things will still rule the world after we die. BTW I write SW for living as well
Both of you should decipher it
Data actually came from Latin, but what you're describing here is the Greek cognate of that word.
@@AlexChen0905 I think I was clear that I wasn't talking about the word "data" but the word *for* "data" in Greek, which is dedomena.
@@gekylafas Oh ok. my bad
1:34 That Sanskrit sentence means "I don't understand". Ted ed, that's some craftily placed Easter egg.
Wow... where did you learn sanskrit? Do you live somewhere in the Gujarat area?
@@thebluefriend I'm from Tamil Nadu. My grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar. I learnt a bit from him.
Sasidharan Karthikeyan wow
@@sasidharankarthikeyan3798 ou
Ya the Irish translates to 'I don't understand' as well. Well played TED-Ed...
That language is cursed, for everyone who tries to decipher it dies in some way.
It's for some reason, intellectual people tend to die before their major breakthrough, or discovery.
@@vittxrio5198 , Fermat 😭
Wait a minute, does everyone not die in some way.
mumke wrote the language
Has there been anyone who do something and not die?
I love how people in World War times still have the chance to research something, big or small--even if it unrelated to the war at that time.
And yes, it's seemed like the linear B brought its own 'curse', but at least their name was remembered forever in history.
War isn't all blood-curdling fight for dear life. Most of the time it is a long monotonous bore mixed in with blood-curdling fight for dear life...
The Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov was studying ancient Egyptian during the war. He worked as a school teacher for most of the war because he wasn't fit for military service, but he had to escape from the advancing Germans more than once. After the war he went on to study the Mayan script and deciphered it.
I never thought I'd find something so educational so interesting. TED-Ed, you inspire curiosity in the best of ways. The people behind this whole platform are invaluable.
Isn’t it interesting how they both died before being able to complete their work...
@@omikuron9716 クロン 오미
@@ADeeSHUPA 앙~
@@ADeeSHUPA wow Japanese and Korean together
@@vwvwvvvw4519 YuP
@@vwvwvvvw4519 ネオ코스모
The artfulness of this animation is pure magic.
for once I'm glad I was taught Sanskrit in school as a third language. I could actually understand the one on the blackboard. Ironically though it means "I don't understand" . LOL
This is exactly what I am thinking. LOL
@Varoon west Bengal
@Varoon Nvm
You have to be a literal genius to decode a dead language. The fact that they can figure out the sounds, and what the letters individually are is insane. Curious how accurate they are, if they truly decipher it.
Duolingo: Practice 5 minutes a day or I’ll feed you to the Minotaur.
Can't wait for "I am an apple" in Linear B
@@tonix1993 Or "An apple eat a man" in Linear A :D
Man I thought I was among the few who used it.
@@wish-keeper can you explain (I am newbie) ?
I WANT TO LEARN NAHUATL, MIXTECO, AND ZAPOTECO
This reminded me of "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" in Sherlock Holmes.
The decoding was very easy especially the e part of the dancing people
You are A man of culture
I just read that last week!
@@harsh3624 Yes! But Sherlock deduced it in 1892. At least 8 years before Sir Arthur Evans stumbled upon these tablets.
@@sasidharankarthikeyan3798 btw Sherlock Holmes is not real. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes stories
"The script was a syllabary, where each symbol represented both a consonant and a vowel--mixed with characters that each represented a whole word."
Wow, that sounds a LOT like Japanese!
Chinese,actez
@@Moodboard39 The "characters that each represented a whole word" would describe Chinese. But "a syllabary, where each symbol represented both a consonant and a vowel" does not. At least not to my knowledge.
But both of these apply to Japanese. Japanese has "kanji"--which are, in fact, (often modified) Chinese characters--each of which represents an idea/word, and it also had kana, which represent sounds (most of them represent a consonant sound + a vowel sound).
Japanese katakana and hiragana are syllabaries too.
I like how they have answeres for question I never thought about
Cringe
@@IHatePeopleOfColor you are cringe
Exactly. Teded is my all time favourite channel.
@@xeno4162 yeah, it's one of the best information channel remaining on yt for sure
@@IHatePeopleOfColor youre cringe
2:33 this transition is simultaneously genius and terrifying
Ted-ed works really hard. I can’t believe they uploaded 2 videos in 2 days. Thanks for the hard work, Ted-ed ❤️
Whenever I see something related to decoding, decryption. I remember Alan Turing. How brilliant that man was 🙏
He built a machine that could decode 159e+18 settings.
If you manually check each setting, like 10 settings per minute, it will take 30e+12 years to complete checking. Which is way more than the age of the universe.
I dont get it
Patric star~
Alan Turing wasnt the first one to break the enigma machine
@@nightfury2161 lol
@@nightfury2161
During WW2. Germany were using encryption to deliver messages to their troops. There were 159 million million million possible languages. They can use any one of them to encrypt their message. They used one language per day (they changed the encrypting language every day).
So, the job assigned to Alan Turing (he was in England) was to find out which language they are using. He had only 24 hrs to find the encrypted language as the language change every day. So, he had to find out one language out of 159 million million million languages. Can you imagine that 😱
If you start comparing the encrypted message with those of the 159 million million million languages given to you. It will take about 30 trillion years to check completely.
*Forgive me, If my english is poor. Point out the grammar mistakes. I'm always ready to learn.
@@IamJsb
How ? If it takes that much time then how did he do it,? By a machine maybe?
Last time I was this early the Minoans were still alive and flourishing
Cringe
What
What's even the punchline of these?!
Said a 2000 year old guy
There was no internet when the minoans were around. Those primitives haven't even invented the wheel..lol
These people are amazing. The time and passion or obsession they put in it is astonishing.
The animations are amazing!! Editors and creators must put in so so much time and effort
Can we appreciate the effort they put in each video!
I just finished 'the code book' by Simon Singh which has a detailed account of not only linear b, but the Egyptian hyroglyphics and numerous ciphers & languages throughout history. If you find this vd interesting, highly recommend this book, might make quarantine lil more productive mayb
Nobody:
Me at 2 am:
*Watching how people decoded languages*
Namit Sethi me rn
Lesson learned: do not decipher a language if you do not want to die yet
Some of my friends would love it! (mostly the toxic ones I try to avoid)
@@madlad255 hH
I am so grateful to all the people who dedicate their lives to learn and educate us about our history. It makes our lives so much more meaningful and interesting.
That's Greek history, and you're dutch or something.. so that's different.. lol
The Emir of Jaffa ... I mean the history of the world. And a name doesn’t even have to mean that you are a 100% from a certain country.
@@LisaMariavanHarmelen well I cant say you didn't have a point there..lol 👍
Oh Wow! That starting quote was beautiful and awesome as ever.
The interesting story about this is that a SIR find archaeological treasures of my country and he kept them locked. Nice!
Thank you Ted-ed for these great videos, They really make quarantine time productive
This is why i love to watch TedEd, they answer unasked questions.
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling
Try weed"
Salute to you for containing this amount of quotes in your brain.
@@blueeye2281 They just look them up, I think. But then again, if they're so early?
Surely you mean "cakes", mr. Kipling?
I have always wondered how historians decipher a language that is no longer spoken, good video😀
Is speculation, guess, how they going to known that
It was hard, but all scholars know classical Greek (no longer spoken too -- but known very well because of cultural importance). And modern living Greek is more or less descendent of these languages.
What is really hard -- is deciphering language with NO living descendants.
Like Etruscan, for example.
the simplicity of the script and the animation had me learn more than in my 18 years of school
Excellent video. Very interesting and worthwhile. A must see for everyone.
I was literally googling yesterday how to translate hieroglyphics.... Ted, are you watching me?
Google is watching you. And me...
Def not someone who add literally to everything
No they not watching you
@@eavyeavy2864 i was actually studying it that subject matter for a final..
But yeah i do misuse literally sometimes
@@Moodboard39 i know, it was a joke/hiperbole
I remember learning about Linear A and Linear B in primary school. Could never imagine it would be so hard to decipher a language.
How u know is just guessing
That first quote is so beautiful! Love it!
In or out of school, I love watching your videos.
Me: I want to transcribe gem language
Me after the video: Nevermind-
In uni they haven't told us about Alice Kober,but only about Michael Ventris.The animation of the Minoan frescoes was very nice.😍
I love this, your videos have inspired me to create my own animated videos, expressing my truth through them 🤍
I love watching contents in this channel.
Lots of love and support from IIT B
An amazing video once again! Big shoutout to Bethany Cutmore-Scott (the narrator) and Movult (the graphic animation company) for bringing this fascinating lesson to life. I love how Movult tried to mimic the design and the (known) colour palette of the ancient world's art then. Really ties in with the lesson.
At the end of the video you mention that Linear A has yet to be deciphered. I have already come across a decipherment attempt which I find convincing. The language is not Greek but Minoan. It is by Peter Revesz, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has videos and articles. Beautifully illustrated video, and the illustrations are not only beautiful but also aid in comprehension.
Nice video with nice animations again! Keep up with the great videos!!! 👍👍👍😄😄😄
Thanks for a very neat summary of the decipherment of Linear B. One thing it might be worth mentioning is that the Greek of Linear B is very old: about as similar to Classical Greek as Chaucer is to Modern English. So it's Greek, but not as we know it.
Aww, this is a good summary, but I thought there would be new stuff. Interesting stuff nonetheless. I wonder if we'll ever get closer to figuring Linear A out. These people were brilliant and very hardworking to have made such breakthroughs, I love Linguistics and the evolution of languages, and everything I learned related to this in college is obvious once the professor explains the logic, but I would never be able to figure it out myself.
우리가 모르는 언어도 알아갈 수 있다는 것이 너무 신기하였습니다. 사람의 배우고 싶어하는 욕구가 정말 대단한것 같습니다. 재미있는 시간 되었습니다. 감사합니다.
Congratulations on 12 million subs
Perfect! I needed this to decode this ancient language I just found.
2:36
Nice Maxim-style machine gun with Bren gun magazine you got there.
Cringe
Hwat
@@IHatePeopleOfColor HONG HONG HONG
Plot twist:
It doesn't mean anything but is a curse of death for those who try to decipher it
Might release the mummy
Nice video! Very interesting subject presented well!
Very Informative !
"Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why do all the great people die so young 😭
Edit: Wow! Never got so many likes
I was thinking the same today.
You see, millions of unpopular people have died young and there are also many great people who died old.
They are mostly killed
Yeah so sad
rip juice wrld 1998-2019
Really educative.
So Fascinating! Contains material for a full featured film.
You have an informative contents ..... n ur channel inspire me to showcase my drawing skills to be a youtuber by the way thank you for teaching us more than our school teaches us
Hahaha
Its not too late to start anything
Hmmmmmmm
You wanna know how to solve a language or a code? Give it to reddit.
facts
@@ornessarhithfaeron3576 hM
more like pleddit.
😂😂😂 u kidding me
@@ornessarhithfaeron3576 bs
Ted Ed answers questions I didn't know exist! 👍
I liked the transitions!
Indus Valley language? Anyone? Okay I'm going...
Me
Sanskrit ??
One of the hardest challenges. It is hypothesized as a mix of proto-Dravidian and Austroasiatic languages.
@@shukrantpatil no one knows what sanskrit means?
The trouble with the indus valley script is the artefacts we have of them aren't whole books worth but just clay tablets with 3-5 characters.
Linear A would be a lot easier to decipher is if we knew what languages it was related to.
You're right. So far it seems that Minoan and Greek aren't related languages and there is no living relative of Minoan
They deciphered some texts
@@EspeonMistress00 not all
I was just wondering about this the other day!
Yeah, SCIENCE!
Awesome and informative video
I need to show this to my teachers, they can’t read what I write 😭
Same lmao
Thanks for the video! Hopefully I can decode my girlfriends handwriting in a couple of years!
Well done Ted ! I didn't see come in...
I’ve often wondered where languages come from. The fact that there are so many seems mysterious, seeing as how all people’s descended from the same bunch of ancestors. Even areas that were geographically close together could have completely different languages. It’s a great topic for thought.
Read the Bible. Not hard to known that
@@Moodboard39 I recommend historically accurate books
It works a bit like evolution - populations separate, mutations occur over time until two populations that were originally one are no longer recognisable as the same thing - rinse and repeat over thousands of years... - oh, and allow the populations to meet each other, exchange information, merge, split etc - a bit like mixing different colours of plasticine :-)
plot twist :
The tablets were written in that steange languages which it was been translated to "a list of debts"
patients trying to decipher the doctor's inscription:
can I get more like then jus 31 :(
At least you can ask what they wrote, and if they're angry about it, I'd just tell them they would've started a new script that no one will ever decipher if I didn't ask!
@@madlad255 I don't think I have ever actually read the inscription becoz I jus CANT but the pharmacy somehow have the superpower to understand squiggles
in my opinion pharmacy people should do paper checking coz if a teacher does not understand a word she jus doesn't give marks for that like... ya
Gotta love those Minoans. They left us with so many pretty-looking puzzle pieces.
Congratulations on 12M!
Meanwhile the Voynich Manuscript remains unsolved, with its extremely strange language of which no one can figure out a word of
It is about having a known reference language to translate the unknown language
@@covenawhite4855 hmm
@@Moodboard39 🧐
It would be really nice if next video on languages is about how Mayan language was decoded.
Spoiler alert:
A Soviet helped a lot
Don't know about others but I cried and jumped with excitement when for the first time.....the sanskrit language is featured in a Ted Ed video.....
Good to see some Minoan appreciations from Ted-Ed
I've never been this early
I was gonna comment the same thing
First time?
@@andresv.8880 yah
Me 2
it gave me the notification 6 mins after the video was uplaoded
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."
-Nelson Mandela
Think Different - Thought Provoking Ideas bot
I think I know you
@@pratyush6487 lol thanks for letting me know about myself.
2:34 that was a nice transition
2:33 that role change animation was cool! He had a killer instinct.
I love Micheal Ventris' features are so much like the Tintin Comics.
2:45
The Tintin look
Shifting from architect to gunner on the battlefield was some brilliant animation idea
interesting..good info 👍
They’re actually just cheat codes and people are accidentally saying a respawn code when trying to pronounce characters
Imagine writing some random meaningless lines and curves on a piece of paper and bury it so thousand of years later some archeologists will find it and think about how was our civilization.
If it doesn't follow Zipf's law, the prank will have failed
Like doctor's handwriting 😂
Scholar: Tries to decipher Linear B
*Linear B: I'm about to end this person's whole career*
The first movie that came to my mind after seeing the title is, Arrival, it shows how we can understand a foreign language but we may also misunderstand it