Footnote 2 – When Civilization Collapsed

In the first half of the second millennium B.C.E., the Minoans on Crete invented a script, the as-yet undeciphered Linear A, to write their own language. When Mycenaeans from the Greek mainland conquered Crete, they adapted Linear A to record an ancient form of Greek; this script, called Linear B, was deciphered by the English architect Michael Ventris in the 1950s. Tablets inscribed with Linear B have been found on Crete and at Mycenaean sites on the Peloponnesus.