For more than a century, scholars stared at the same strange marks and got almost nowhere. The signs belonged to Linear Elamite, a 4,000-year-old writing system from ancient Iran. They appeared on ...

Clay tablet, dated to 1450-1375 BC, inscribed with Linear B script. The Linear B script of the Mycenaen civilization (c. 1600 to 1100 BC) represented an early form of Greek. It was descended from the ...