The world will likely never know how much human history has been lost because evidence has vanished to the elements of nature or the succeeding constructions of later societies — or to the fact that the untold stories have abbreviated our knowledge of certain civilizations because their written scripts and languages have remained undeciphered. Ancient civilizations like the Minoans, Etruscans, the Rapa Nui, and many others come to mind.
Enter here Miguel Valério of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who has made it his life’s scholastic journey in part to explore the mysteries of undeciphered scripts.
“I like problem-solving, I like codes, I like puzzles,” says Valério.
Indeed, this interest, talent and proclivity he exercised very early on in life eventually led to education and academic research that included the still largely undeciphered script of Linear A, the enigmatic script of the ancient Minoans, and on to other research endeavors focusing on scripts such as Cypro-Minoan and even the undeciphered rongorongo script of the Rapa Nui of Easter Island in the southeastern Pacific.
Now, Dr. Ester Salgarella, in her podcast series, Aegean Connections, has opened a window on Valério and his work for the benefit of the listening public through her latest episode, From the Aegean to the Pacific: comparative perspectives on undeciphered scripts, by interviewing him about how he arrived at his current stage of studies and the steps and patterns that are common to all approaches by scholars endeavoring to shed light on the unknowns of scripts like Linear A and other elusive scripts around the world.
The podcast is free to the public and anyone interested in learning more about Miguel Valério and what he has to say can listen by linking to Salgarella’s Episode 7 of the podcast series.
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Cover Image, Top Left: Linear A inscription on a clay tablet from Crete, probably 15th century BC. Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. Zde, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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