Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts

by Andrew Robinson

An altogether extraordinary and fascinating work, "Lost Languages" is an engaging and engrossing look at the ways that anthropologists and linguists have deciphered lost or forgotten languages.

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, History, Linguistics, Science, Archaeology, Anthropology

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

(William) Andrew Coulthard Robinson is a British author and former newspaper editor.

Andrew Robinson was educated at the Dragon School, Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, University College, Oxford where he read Chemistry and finally the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is the son of Neville Robinson, an Oxford physicist.

Robinson first visited India in 1975 and has been a devotee of the country's culture ever since, in particular the Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore and the Bengali film director Satyajit Ray. He has authored many books and articles. Until 2006, he was the Literary Editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement<?em>. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.

He is based in London and is now a full-time writer.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Reviews

[Miglė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niekas nemanė, kad išifruoti nežinomus rašmenis yra lengva. Bet aš tikrai negalvojau, kad tai yra TAIP sunku!

Knygoje ramiai, gana detaliai pasakojamos trijų rašmenų sistemų - Egipto hieroglifų, linear B ir majų glifų - iššifravimo istorijos. Tada pasakojamos istorijos 9 kitų neiššifruotų arba dalinai iššifruotų rašmenų istorijos. Pabaigiama Faisto disku, arba, kaip piktai apie jį atsiliepia vienas ekspertas, "TUO disku".

Egipto hieroglifai - kvailai įsivaizdavau, kad radus Rozetės akmenį viskas pasidarė aišku. O ne! Toli gražu! Dar buvo ten reikalų.

Linear B - pagrindinis ekspertas ilgai buvo įsitikinęs, kad tai tikrai ne graikų, ir iššifravimas dėl klaidingos prielaidos užtruko baisiai ilgai. Galiausiai vienas bičas nedrąsiai pasiūlė, kad gal visgi tai graikų kalba. Akurat!

Majų glifai - nepaprastai gražūs ir, ko gero, taip ir nebūtų iššifruoti, jei ne giminingų kalbų egzistavimas ir blogasis vienuolis, kuris kadaise užrašė kelis tų glifų skiemenis. Blogasis, nes išžudė daug majų.

Merojės civilizacijos raštas - raštas kaip ir aiškus, panašus į egiptiečių kursyvą. Bet neaiški kalba! Gal iš Afro-azijinių kalbų šeimos, gal iš Nilo- Sacharos kalbų šeimos. Niekas nežino, nelabai ji į ką nors panaši.

Etruskų kalba - raštas visiškai aiškus, kalba visiškai neaiški. T.y. galim žinoti, kur ten žmonių vardai ir pan, bet ką likęs tekstas sako - bbz. Tikrai kad ne Indo-europiečių kalba, gali būti, kad netgi izoliuota. Ir suprask tu man dabar. Įdomu, kad iš etruskų į Europos kalbas atėjo tokie žodžiai kaip "atriumas", "taverna", "elementas" ir "litera".

Linear A - kaip ir linear B, atrasta Kretoje, bet nepanaši į graikų ar kokią kitą. Kol kas tikėtiniausias kandidatas - viena iš išnykusių Anatolijos kalbų, gimininga hetitų.

Proto-Elamo raštas - seniausias neišširuotas raštas, naudotas 3050-2900 m. pr. Kr. Atrodo, nesusijusi su kitomis Elamo kalbomis, naudota panašiai tuo metu, kaip šumerų hieroglifai, kažkiek panašūs, bet nėr kaip išifruoti, jei kalbos visai nežinome.

Rongo-rongo - Velykų salos rašmenys, situacija priešinga negu su Etruskų: kalbą kaip ir žinom, bet neaišku, kuris ženklas ką reiškia. Gal tai išvis net ne rašmenys, o mnemoniniai ženklai, skirti prisiminti ten kokius vietinius himnus ar ką.

Zapotekų ir Ishtmian raštai - vėl Centrinė Amerika, tik šįsyk nieko nežinom, išskyrus skaičių sistemą.

Indo slėnio raštas - mažai tikimybės iššifruoti, nes mažai ženklų (greičiausiai nėra daug sakinių, nėra su kuo palyginti patvirtinimui, ar teisingai iššifravai). Greičiausiai gana turtingos ir visai nekaringos (kasinėjant nerasta JOKIŲ karybos reikmenų ir jokių karo vaizdavimų) dravidų civilizacijos reliktas, iki užeinant indoeuropiečiams, kurie tai nesibodėjo kariauti.

TAS diskas - korpusas baisiai mažas, diskas sukurtas tarsi spausdinimui, bet nerasta daugiau nė vieno tokio rašto pavyzdžio. Pagal ženklų skaičių lyg ir skiemeninis, nustatyta skaitymo kryptis, bet tuo ir baigiasi. Gal reikia pabandyti datuoti tą diską, - sako kai kurie mokslininkai, - gal čia išvis kokio XVI a. klastotė. Bet graikai neleidžia, jei pasirodys, kad klastotė, ką jie turistams rodys?

Knygos pasakojimas lėtas, kruopštus. Skaitytojui duodama "užduočių", kad pats pabandytų ir įsitikintų, kaip galima nustatyti ženklų skaičių kalboje ar pan. Kitaip sakant, ši knyga reikalauja dėmesio ir "darbo", bet apsimoka, nes tikrai daug sužinai apie kalbas ir jų šifravimą.

Štai maždaug tipinis knygos sakinys:

Let us examine fairly briefly four of the more serious claims, all by respected scholars. Although none has been accepted - in fact, they have been almost universally rejected - each has something worthwhile to teach us about how to tackle this difficult problem; and how not to.

Po šitos knygos padėjau savo svajonę kada nors iššifruoti kokį nežinomą raštą ten pat, kur padėjau savo svajonę kada nors įrodyti neįrodytą matematinę teoremą. Gal ir gerai.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this brief overview of many of the world's undeciphered scripts. Some of these I had not heard of, or had heard very little about, such as the Phaistos Disc and the Zapotec and Isthmian scripts. It was an easy read and the stories flowed well. I enjoyed Andrew Robinson's commentaries and opinions. At times he tells you to try to figure a problem out by looking at a picture or chart. (I never did spend time figuring any of it out, I just kept reading for the answers.)

Because of all the different scripts mentioned in the book, there isn't a lot of detail about any of them. It's a good introductory text. I have read several books about the Maya hieroglyphs (all reputable) and I might explore more books that talk about some of these scripts in more detail. I'll have to be careful - it sounds like there is a lot of information published about these scripts and not all of it can be trusted.

This book is copyrighted in 2002 and I'm curious to know if anything new has been discovered or if any more progress on decipherment has been made in the last 12 years.

I was disappointed in all of the typos in the book. That does not, of course, affect my rating, but it was frustrating to read a non-fiction book on language that was not adequately proof read!

[Randy Mcdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some times ago, james-nicoll asked what got people interested in steampunk ("Pretty pretty brassworks?" he asked "An English boot, stamping on the face of humanity forever?"). For me, as I've written in the past, my interest in steampunk-type scenarios comes mainly from my interest in the unexpected congruencies between past and present informational environments, in the possibility that the world could have been more information-dense, that there would have been more left of the world for us, if only things went differently. The ultimate insofar as this sort of thing is what Wikipedia calls undeciphered writing systems, the dozens of different scripts--alphabetic, pictographic, and otherwise--used by peoples far back in the past which contain information of some sort that's unknown to us. These scripts could contain almost anything, from the powerful epic of Gilgamesh revealed once Sumerian cuneiform was deciphered to the mundane palace records found to be encoded in Mycenean Greece's Linear B once it was decrypted in the early 1950s. We just don't know. The recent controversy over whether or not the Indus script associated with the mysterious Indus Valley Civilization actually was a script-- Asia Times and Language Hat have each covered the new squabbles emerging over a this claim--is another instance of this issue in our contemporary lives.

That's why I'm so impressed by Andrew Robinson's Lost Languages (McGraw-Hill 2002). A pleasantly thick tome that thoroughly examines efforts to decipher different scripts. Lost Languages's examinations follow a fairly consistent pattern, presenting a script in its historical context, identifying possible links with other scripts and language, then going on to identify leading figures in the decipherment efforts and their particular theories. Robinson starts by examining three recently deciphered scripts--the Linear B script used to encode pre-Homeric Greek and the hieroglyphic scripts of the Mayans and Egyptians--to give his readers an idea as to the processes involved, in the process introducing us to the necessarily and brilliantly iconoclastic thinking of the people ultimately responsible for breaking the codes (Linear B's Michael Ventris, Mayan script's Yuri Knorozov, the Egyptian hieroglyphs' Jean-François Champollion). Once the reader has been sufficiently briefed, Robinson plunges into the unknown scripts. They're a wonderfully mixed bunch. Some, like Linear A, have areas of overlap with other scripts but describe mysterious languages; some, like the Indus Valley and proto-Elamite scripts, describe languages that are at best known only speculatively spoken in civilizations long extinct; some, like the rongorongo of Easter Island, represent languages still spoken but lack anyone who could read them. Some scripts might well not be scripts at all, in place of representing living languages serving instead as stamp iconography or as accounting notations. Some, like the spectacularly enigmatic Phaistos Disc, are simply impossible to decipher. Yes, Robinson does point out repeatedly that undeciphered scripts regularly attract all manner of crackpots: Hindu nationalists who claim that the Indus script gave rise to the alphabets of the Mediterranean; New Age writers who say that the Phaistos Disc contains information on interplanetary navigation; and so on. The crackpots are almost as entertaining as the competent scholars.

Superlatively thoroughness is always good, but more importantly Lost Languages was a pleasure to read, Robinson's writing wonderfully muscular writing style existing alongside the well-formatted illustrative graphics which place Lost Languages firmly in the realm of popular literature. The great virtue of Robinson's book is that it takes a relatively obscure subject and popularizes it, making it a readable and enjoyable book for the masses who aren't well-versed in this field while not sacrificing its intellectual rigour. Lost Languages is a book that deserves to be widely read by anyone interested in how previous civilizations stored their information in the distant past and how researchers today are trying to recover that information which remains stubbornly encrypted.

[Ruby Hollyberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most exciting nonfiction books I've ever read, period. Covers the entire history of attempted decipherment of extinct written languages, each chapter a different language. Describes, depicts and explains both the decorated artifacts that indicated the onetime usage of the languages and the sometimes eccentric catalog of archaeologists and linguists who have devoted part or all of their intelligence to the codebreaking necessary. A few successes, such as Linear A, some partial successes like Mayan, and a great many failures make up the book's trajectory, leaving many languages still mysterious. There is hope always for the historical code crackers of the future, as decipherment is dependent entirely on the number of artifacts found, their content and legibility. So any dig anywhere in the world could solve forever one of these mysteries and possibly reveal an entire fascinating civilization to us - Indus Valley, Etruscan, and many more!

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an intellectual treat of the highest order! It starts out with three chapters describing successful decipherments : Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B, and the Mayan script. Having read both "The Decipherment of Linear B" by Chadwick and "Breaking the Maya Code" by Michael Coe, I found the information in these chapters to be carefully condensed and selected - an ideal introduction, with just enough details to enable the reader to grasp the major conceptual leaps made by the decipherers.

The second part of the book consists of a series of chapters dedicated to as-yet undeciphered scripts, such as Etruscan, Linear A, some early meso-American languages, and the fascinating rongorongo of Easter Island. These chapters give a short introduction as to the where-and-when these scripts originated, what type of material is available (how many inscriptions and how many characters), and what little the scholars have been able to glean so far. The chapters on rongorongo and the Phaistos disc are especially fun, if only because so many people, some more serious than the others, have claimed to have deciphered them, sometimes in truly bizarre way. The author tears into some of the claims with great gusto, and I enjoyed the rational, logical way in which he pointed out unwarranted assumptions, circular reasoning, or plain old wishful thinking.

The illustrations in the book are very helpful. Often there is a photograph of an inscribed object or tablet, then a line drawing of the inscriptions with signs or groups of signs of particular interest highlighted. It takes a highly skilled visual imagination to pick up these nuances, repetitions or groupings, and it really helped to have things so neatly presented. Word lists, tables and maps all help to make this a very enjoyable book.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who is sensitive to the romance of unknown scripts, or even anyone who enjoys a good puzzle.

[Mateen Ar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly marvellous study of ancient script-deciphering. Andrew Robinson's energy seeps through his words, every page is a portrait of enthusiasm and excitement. The book covers a number of decipherments and attempts, with thorough yet fun explanation, beautiful and helpful pictures, and a small summary of scholarship, the quality of which, in my opinion, deteriorates towards the end of the book.
I heavily recommend this book to all lovers of mystery.

[May Ling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: This book truly delivers the enigma part. However, if your goal was to get a little more than just that, it falls flat. I was focused on trying to understand the trajectory of the Rosetta Stone, but it just didn't have what I specifically needed.

I think Robinson is stuck on describing the Enigmas and his writing doesn't even try. Just when I think he's about to elucidate, there is nothing. The writing style is linear, one disjointed semi-discovery with another but no real composite sort of summary of things. I hate that b/c if people are researching across ideas, then it's very very hard to follow. Also, there was a lot of talk about the rosetta stone, but no meaningful translation that actually happened on the stone and what it meant. I think translating a few words for us is not the same as let me tell you what awesomeness it said. And the Rosetta Stone I think we already translated at that point in entirety. (I think but I don't know b/c I can't get a real meaningful date from any of these books, but there is 1 full translation that I saw on archive.com that looks to pre-date this guy).

In contrast, other books might be written more as, here is the background. Here's what we're trying to know. Here's where we're at and the timing of what helped what.

Still, I know squat about ancient language deciphering and this guy knows tons, so I could never give him less than 3 stars. He's brilliant in his field. I just find unlocking his secrets in book format unideal. Plus, he does try to compare Mayan language to Egyptian Hieroglyphs and I think that is Baws.

Notes:
p. 13 - "To me the most frustrating state is to have a glyph with known phonetic signs, sot hat we can pronounce the glyph, but we cannot find the word in any of the Mayan languages."
It's weird how he talks about knowing the sound with such certainty. I might need to just learn more about ancient Mayan languages to appreciate this. In things like Chinese, I often know the meaning, but not the sound b/c I am only half learned in the language.

p. 23 He's talking about the idea that iconigraphs like Chinese and Hieroglyphs are actually used all over. Street signs, icons in a computer, all communicate far more complexity than a phonographic system. "Instead of 'move cursor to right' there is a simple logogram instead of chunks of text with alphabet-ic instructions to press a certain set of keys, there are computer 'icons' at which we point and click a mouse, and carry out complex operations as if by magic."
Also,
"Chinese characters do speak directly to the mind without the intervention of sound, despite centuries of assertion to the contrary by the Chinese and some western scholars."
"Aristotle called the basic unit of language - by which he meant both spoken and written language - gramma."

p. 30 The chart on how many characters are in each language is pretty awesome.
p. 41 He talks about how it used to be cool to touch the rock, but that was destroying it. There was "chalk and carnauba wax rubbed into the surface by the museum curators to increase visibility and aid preservation. In the 1990s, in time for the bicentenary, this policy was changed and the stone cleaned to reveal its natural color. it is now seen to be a dark gray slab of igneous rock (not basalt as formerly believed), which sparkles with feldspar andmica and has a pink vein through its top left-hand corner; it weights some three quarters of a ton."
p. 45 He talks about the fact that "Much of the decree is taken up, to put it bluntly, with the terms of a deal by which the priests agreed to give their support to the new king (who was only thirteen) in exchange for certain privileges." Given what I read about this in a book from 2007 and the actual full translation if found on Archieve.com, it does not sound like the right interpretation of what the stone says. It does not change his conclusion though that the stone was written in 3 languages and is a translation from the three. The way he articulates it on p. 46 is REALLY UNCLEAR as to whether these languages are all phonetic or something else. If the Greek is phonetic and the other two are not, it should NOT look so similar. But I think this is better described in another book I've read on the Rosetta Stone. for that reason, I deducted a full star. This is especially the case b/c coptic is NOT one of the languages on the list on page 30 so there is no way to really understand WTF he meant. like, I should not be unclear at any point which of these languages is pictorial and which is symbolic but he then says:
"In other words, the three inscriptions, hieroglyphic, demotic, and greek - were equivalent in meaning, though not necessarily 'word for word' translations of each other. Then he goes on to talk about it in a way that is a bit unclear. If you do know a symbolic language, this doesn't quite make sense. Further, there is not talk about grammar that might have indicated this. In contrast, other books just focus on the cartouches being phonetic which hold the key and work backward to how they then figured it all out."
Similarly, P. 46 He says "DeSacy deserves credit as the first to make an important suggestion: That the names inside the hieroglyphic car-touches, which he naturally assumed were Ptolemy, Alexander, and so on, were also spelt alphabetically, as in demotic. He was led to this by some information given him by one of his pupils, a student of Chinese, in 1811." I have to research more deeply here, b/c credit is typically given to Thomas Young in other books and it's usually b/c they say he studied Chinese language. In truth the stories of Young seem cray cray. They like to credit him with studying all 200 languages in the encyclopedia Britannica, but that sounds like malarky. Even as a speed reader, I don't buy that.

p. 88 There is some language called linear B. It is totally unclear to me WTF that is. It is something that comes in between the time of Egypt and Mesopotamian cunefirm. But I seriously have no context. This is what I hate about this author. His audience is people that already know everything about this field in its entirety. 1 star removed.

p. 92 - The Mayans use a base 20. Ok. Very cool. At some point, I'd love to study this. These types of intriguing knowledge points is why I didn't demote you to 2 stars.

p 98 - They attempted the proper name approach on Mayan stuff, but since no one knew those names, that did not help. They had to figure out something else. (In other words, it's possible he's straight-up guessing as they were in Europe before they found the Rosetta stone).

p. 121 - They think all the words essentially end in a vowel and that might be something to decipher, but again, i think they might just be totally guessing. It's unclear to me that there's some meaningful proof. That's part of why I removed a star. Just tell me what you know and why. This format of writing is painful AF.

p. 145 You get a study of the frequency of letters. At least here, I can see your methodology, but shouldn't this be sooner in the book, like before you tell me all the BS you don't actually know? Or at least next to it, so I can better map why you think X is linked to y?

p. 165-166 He talks about proto-Elamite script. They have found over 5500 characters. This book would have benefited from an infographic that plots time and location of these languages.

p. 229 Assuming you've followed along, he starts to compare the scripts to each other in Indian languages. I'm so unclear why he's so passionate about Rao being wrong, b/c he's not really presenting a counterpoint. It's more just a list of how different people think, and I'd prefer that in a chart. This is esp so, b/c I can't tell that any of them have really great logic for why they think they are right.

[Ian Kemp]

If you are ever tempted to have a crack at deciphering an unknown ancient language, read this book first and be talked out of it. The main message of this detached overview is that successfully extracting meaning from a forgotten script is a long, long, long, feat of endurance and hard work involving multiple people with a wide range of skills and a bit of luck.



Some successful decipherments such as the ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics, Linear B (perhaps the most famous) and Mayan glyphs (perhaps the most glamorous) are studied and analysed to pick out the successful strategies, after which the prospects for the main extant hidden languages (linear A, Etruscan and Rongorongo among them) are reviewed, mostly pessimistically.



The author has a mix of eye-rolling bemusement and disdain for the legions of amateur (and professional but misguided) would-be decipherers who clearly cause him much pain by invading his professional space, including a barbed plink at 'arrogant' Richard Feynman for his over-hyped claim to have deciphered Mayan glyphs unaided - when in fact as the author points out he simply deciphered the number system, which is usually the simplest part and a convenient entry into a lost script.



Fascinating book, I was a bit let down that he mentioned two of my faves - Nordic runes and the Voynich manuscript - only to say that is not going to mention them; but a good read for a certain geeky type of person, of which I am obviously one. And no I won't be rushing to announce my own decoding of Linear A any time soon.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful beginner's resource for anyone interested in historical scripts and the processes that led to (or are currently leading to, fingers crossed) their decipherments. Robinson manages to be concise without skimping on any of the important details. The accessibility of the writing in no way limits the breadth of information Robinson is able to impart: he balances technical jargon equally with simple prose and diagrams. This book is no dry textbook. Speaking of diagrams, the layout of this book is phenomenal. The interior design (and even the attractive cover, for that matter) is incredible. I have never read a prettier book. Crisp and neat.

The only negative I can think of is that in almost every chapter Robinson has a tendency to allow his criticism of imprecise decipherments to grow into steamy invectives. Brian Fagan was right in describing the book as "entertaining" but "dispassionate" it seems not to be. Robinson sometimes can seem a little mean, but he could just be an old battle-worn linguist who has to deal with such nonsense every inch of his academic career - I admittedly know little about him or cryptolinguistics. And the diatribes - ending with his describing Feynman as "arrogant" in the epilogue - are all really in service of highlighting the objectively proper methods that are sometimes neglected by amateurs and scholars alike, so they are not unnecessary by any means. Just a little grumpy.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in language, archaeology, or cryptography. It may prove scant to academics and offensive to passionate amateurs, but it's a beautiful book and an easy read for us normal human beings.

[Clinton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lost Languages presents a scholarly perspective on written languages, some of which have been decoded and others which remain unreadable. A dry read to be sure, but it presents an interesting perspective on language and its relationship to language. Robinson spends a great deal of time arguing that writing cannot be understood without first understanding the underlying language, which makes some decipherments (such as that of the Phaistos Disc) seem hopeless.

My favorite chapter was on rongo rongo, the written script of the Eastern Islanders. No one really knows whether the language was developed after exposure to the writing of Westerners, or whether it'd been in use long before that. I'd read some about Easter Island in Collapse, and I still find fascinating the idea of an entire civilization, including possibly a culture of writing, rising and falling on a small island in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world.

The subjects in this book are widely varied, from Linears A and B to Mayan hieroglyphs. While not a standard summer read, it was still interesting and educational.

[Paperclippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really cool and all too brief little overview of the attempted decipherment of some really mysterious language, like rongorongo and the Phaestos disc. It was just the right level of in-depth for a layman (though honestly I could have stood a book this length on each script!) and I appreciated the opening section on scripts that had been successfully deciphered, like the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Mayan script, since this gave good context and insight for the ones that haven't been figured out - yet.

[Lanny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really good introductory text on all the world's undeciphered scrips and languages. It is an introduction, but it is probably the best one I have seen to cover them all together in one book. This is extremely well put together and has a nice further reading section and lots of pictures and notes, etc. Totally worth having.

[Trever · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book with overview of different languages including ones that have been deciphered and ones that haven't been deciphered. Overview at best, does not go into any great detail that you could find in other more specific books. The book does as a good job of including illustrations and the best alphabets they could find of undeciphered texts.

[Rütteger · Rating 4 out of 5]

So awesome and thorough. A great intro to Linear A and Linear B, and other ancient scripts.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who loves studying ancient and obscure languages [1], this book had a certain amount of appeal for me going into it. And, to the author's credit, despite the fact that the book was at 320 pages a bit longer than most of the books I like to read on a daily basis, it managed to sustain my interest even when I was fighting off sleepiness. There is a certain type of person who is likely to appreciate this book a lot--think of someone who enjoys learning languages and has a certain sort of mind that combines a rigorous scientific approach with a certain love and respect for the humanities as well as obscure ancient cultures. Are you the sort of person who can think of languages in spatial ways to connect parallels together while at the same time being moved to an almost mystical level of reverence by the sight of ancient ruins, wondering what life was like for the people who lived in those nearly forgotten and now abandoned cities? If this sounds like you at all, you are the sort of person who would likely enjoy the stories of deciphering ancient languages and being able to come to terms with a past that has long been obscure and forgotten.

In terms of its contents there are at least two levels of organization within the book. In terms of its surface structure, the book is divided into two unequal parts, beginning with a prologue that introduces the fact that deciphering ancient languages has been the task of only the last two centuries in terms of its successes. Ancient Egyptian, Ugaritic, the Mayan languages, and Linear B (three of which are discussed in the book's opening chapters) were all deciphered fairly recently in the long scale of human history, and the author is intent on showing the false starts and the gradual progress that paved the way for the insights that led certain people to be seen as having deciphered the language. These insights are then turned to a group of languages that have drawn a lot of attention but have not been deciphered for a variety of reasons: the Meroitic script of ancient Kush, the Etruscan alphabet, Linear A, the proto-Elamite script, the Rongorongo script of Rapa Nui, the Zapotec and Isthman scripts of Mexico, the Indus script of that pre-Aryan society, and the Phaistos script of ancient Crete. After discussing these languages and what makes them difficult to solve, the author closes with a discussion of the urge to decipher that exists in people, the desire to communicate across long periods of time, to understand people and come to terms with them, all desires I can understand rather well.

There were really two aspects of this book that particularly grabbed me as important to remember as a student of languages and communication across the distances of physical and emotional space and time. The first insight was the way that people are often attracted to this mystery because they can consider themselves to have solved problems without a real sense of accountability. An ancient script is not deciphered until there are controls that can check whether one's guess and solution are in fact correct ones or insights that further the solving of these mysteries. Many people want to consider themselves experts and not be checked by others, much less skeptical experts. The second insight, related to this, is that to really solve a language it is best if one has long texts, as the more writing one has in a concentrated sense, the easier it is to draw parallels. There are also a lot of other tips that make a language easier to understand--if we can relate an unknown script to a known language, that makes it easier to understand, just as alphabetic scripts are generally easier to decipher than hieroglyphics. For these insights, and many specific details about the various languages in question, this is an immensely worthwhile book, an invitation to help investigate the mysteries of these forgotten languages, in the hope that some day enough will be found, and the right connection will be made between the past and the present to allow us to read a message written in the past that no one today can understand.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subtitle: The Enigma of The World's Undeciphered Scripts. In reality, it also covers a few languages which are no longer lost (Egyptian heiroglyphics, ancient Mayan), just to show how a recovery of a lost writing system might work if it were to happen again in one of these cases. Which makes it kind of like reading a bunch of whodunnits where they don't tell you who done it. If uncertain endings and unresolved mysteries drive you crazy, steer well away from this book.

I have to admit, I have an irrational fascination with other writing systems. Not in any constructive way (I don't know how to read anything other than Latin writing), but enough that packaging with Japanese or Chinese writing is fascinating to me. So a book with the likes of Linear A (Minos), Proto-Elamite (Iran), and the delightfully named Rongorongo (Easter Island) is nearly a sure thing, for me. Thus, my review is here even more subjective than normal.

Robinson does a good job of showing us these scripts in something close to their original context: broken pottery and cracked jade and such. But, because a plain picture of the original is often so damaged and stained as to be...uh, not illegible (obviously, that's the point of the book) but nearly undiscernible, he gives us some cheat sheets and outline drawings to help us appreciate just how big of a task is facing those who would decode these lost scripts.

One thing they have in common, is that there's not enough of them. Part of what has prevented these scripts from being translated, is that there are only a few pieces of them available. Often, we have the equivalent of a few people's checkbooks, some classified ads, and their luggage tags, with which to reconstruct an entire language. In the case of the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, there are almost certainly no further examples of it to be found, which lends this chapter a special poignance.

Other cases, such as Meroitic in Sudan and the Indus script of Pakistan and India, new texts are still being found, and there is hope that someday we will push that epoch-marking moment, "the dawn of history", back in time a few centuries.

That's why the topic is important; why is it fun to read about? One reason is to see the untidy business of scholarly pursuits. There are lots of egos in this business, and lots of big names making big mistakes. Champolion probably deserves his title as the man who decoded Egyptian hieroglyphics, but he clearly benefited from the work of predecessors, who he never clearly credited. Others come off considerably worse, and even those who are not guilty of any moral failings in their field, are often spending decades in wild goose chases that lead nowhere. Scholarly pursuits such as science and history are often portrayed as the domain of intellectually flawless brains, who proceed without error from deduction to deduction. Because the topic of this book is problems that have not been solved yet, the erratic and fitful rate of progress is more clear, revealing the messy, human side of advancing our understanding of any topic.

It also reminds you of how our understanding of past cultures, is not based on the things they might have wished to leave behind. Accounting and tax records are often the bulk of what we have, and they say much about the culture that they might not have chosen to say about themselves. What would the U.S. look like, if you viewed it only through a stack of our credit card receipts?

Lost Languages is a book for those who like to think about thinking, about language and what it is used for in a society, and what it does to a society. It is quick, filled with pictures, written with an ear for the human drama hidden in any field of research, and evocative of the gut-level fascination in seeing writing from a society we know little about, but desperately want to.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am enjoying this book a lot! The author first discusses scripts that have been fully or partially deciphered, and then moves on to scripts that are still mysterious. The greatest thing about this book is the wealth of visuals! There are hundreds of photos and drawings of documents, stele, tablets, paintings, inscriptions, tombs, and ancient objects. He does a great job describing and clarifying what is being shown and often does a step by step analysis of the structure of the language being shown. He writes very well about the cultures and historical backgrounds of the creators of the scripts. I enjoyed his description of the decipherment of Linear B and the interesting discussion of Meriotic and Etruscan. On the negative side, I sometimes feel he is harsh in his judgement of failed attempts at decipherment. For example, he calls attempts to compare Etruscan to other languages ludicrous, and yet he praises this method in other instances where it has yielded successful results. Solving these riddles takes great leaps of imagination coupled with rigorous work. I think he should be a bit more forgiving of creative attempts and less sure that some of the methods he rejects will be unsuccessful. This is especially true when he talks about the work of Dr. Justesson and his attempts to decipher Epi-Olmec. Dr. Justesson is a brilliant man and his idea of reconstructing the underlying proto-language is viable and valid in my opinion.

[Emily]

This is the kind of book that is basically written for people like me, and it is carefully written and beautifully produced in terms of the images, facsimiles, and transcriptions that are included. That said, the author and I have very different views on the concept of the supposed Great Man of History. In particular, I take exception to the way that he frames the successful decipherments, especially that of Linear B. Michael Ventris was very, very smart, but there's no call to denigrate and downplay the crucial and stunningly dedicated and clever contributions of Alice Kober, on which the successful decipherment relied after her early death. I mean, the woman built a database by hand, while working on an older scholar's projects, teaching by day, and smoking herself to death, all during a paper shortage. (She postulated inflexional endings before anyone had figured out how to link syllabic values with any of the characters, let alone how to identify the texts with a known language!!) So, on the one hand, I think Robinson is right that successful decipherments generally rely on a mixture of wide-ranging kinds of expertise and a willingness to rigorously test leaps of intuition, but I have trouble with the premise that this warrants hero-worship of individual scholars.

[Graculus]

I guess my first clue that I was going to have problems finishing this book should have been when I went to collect it from the library and discovered it was not, as I had expected, a 352-page trade paperback but instead a 352-page hardback printed in a tiny font with loads of whitespace on every page.
 
I very much enjoyed the introduction to the book and also the first few chapters, which were about ancient written languages which have been translated successfully - Egyptian hieroglyphics, Linear B and (most recently) Mayan glyphs. The introduction talks about the things you need in order to make it more likely that a language can be deciphered if no longer used and that was interesting in itself.
 
Then we got into chapters about those scripts which have yet to be deciphered, either because nobody can figure out what language they represent or because there is just so little of them currently in existence that they can't be studied effectively. This was where I got lost, as the book goes into much more detail on those than I was able to get my head around. I guess I was looking for something a little more accessible than this proved to be?

[Two Readers in Love · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the author notes, the mystery of the world's undeciphered scripts attracts both geniuses and crackpots (and it is sometimes hard to distinguish the former from the latter.) This book keeps a firm grasp on historic reality and keeps speculation to a minimum... and is all the more interesting for being so firmly grounded in reality.

The book is divided into two parts: the history of how successfully deciphered scripts were cracked (Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Linear B), and an exploration of the challenges of partially-deciphered an undeciphered scripts (Meroitic, Indus, Rongo-Rongo, etc.) The reader is caught up in the thrill of the hunt, with all its twists and wrong turns; the author even gives a few examples where the reader can play along.. As expected, I enjoyed the insight into languages that this book offered; the unexpected bonus was the deep insight on problem-solving techniques that apply to almost any discipline.

A fascinating window into the minds of writers in ancient civilizations, and into the minds of the epigraphers who take up the challenge of deciphering their writing.

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something inherently fascinating about breaking a code. When the code holds insight into a long-lost culture, brilliant people become obsessed with the problem (along with lots of crackpots). The book begins by recounting how three ancient scripts were deciphered -- Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan hieroglyphics, and Minoan Linear B. These examples illuminate the difficulties involved and make it clear it's a good thing the task inspires obsession. Successful translation requires a key of some sort (such as the Rosetta stone), at least partial knowledge of the encoded language, enough examples of the script to permit analysis, deep scholarship, and years of intense study. The author goes on to devote a chapter each to languages that remain unreadable, such as Minoan Linear A, the Indus Valley glyphs, and Rongo Rongo, the weird writing of Easter Island. In all these cases, at least one of the critical pieces appears to be missing, so the prospects aren't good -- but that hasn't stopped people from trying and, sometimes, claiming to succeed. The fascination remains.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the fact that this book was easy to read, both in terms of the lay-out and the vocabulary, which is not too daunting for a general reader. The book is split into two sections; one deals with the stories of how writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Linear B were decoded, while the second focuses on scripts that are still being studied and puzzled over. Robinson gives a chronological story for each one, going through the various theories, schools of thought and steps taken to try and understand the various systems. Diagrams are also given of many of them, which is very helpful and interesting.

There is a more recent edition of this book (this review refers to the 2002 edition), so some of the information about the ongoing studies of the likes of Linear A and Proto-Elamite might not be totally up-to-date now, but I found it to be good in terms of explaining how decipherment is approached and why in some cases, it simply might not be possible.

An intriguing book and a good read for anyone interested in historical languages and culture.

[Jeppe Haarsted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written, entertaining and, as far as I can assess, thoroughly researched, this book is a good introduction to the topic of undeciphered scripts. The author combines the stories behind the attempts to decipher the scripts with detailed information about the scripts themselves, and I think it works well. The book illustrates convincingly why some scripts have been deciphered and why some will most likely never be fully understood. Only negative thing in my view is that the author has excluded some of the more odd and minor undeciphered scripts such as proto-sinaitic, the Tangut script or the Voynich manuscript. He does give a good explanation why they are omitted, but they would surely have made an interesting read, too.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moderately heavy non-fiction that I wouldn't recommend to just anyone but if you're curious about ancient languages and writing systems and are comfortable with some new linguistic terminology it's an interesting read. Lots of pictures help the text immensely but I found my mind wandering during the long section on Linear B wanting to know less about the technique being described and more about the results of the translation. The book itself is well laid out and nicely bound but is slightly awkward to hold because of its width, so you might want to buy a bookstand for this one.

[Leasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems like this is meant to be an introductory textbook of sorts, and it does a very thorough job. It had the potential to be dry, but was actually a pretty quick read - although the sagas of the undeciphered texts did begin to run together with all the similarities. I doubt that's anyone's fault; if all the scholars are using the same methods on each language, and it hasn't worked with any of them, how many ways can there possibly be to express that? I feel thoroughly intro-ed and ready to check the progress on their work since the book was published (2002).

[Leroy Erickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. The author writes about how 3 major ancient scripts were decoded (Egyptian hieroglyphics, Minoan Linear B and Mayan glyphs), and then describes several scripts that haven't yet been decoded (Merotic, Etruscan, Linear A, Proto-elamite, Rongorongo, Zapotec, Isthmian, Indus, and the Phaistos disc). He discusses the people involved in decoding, their techniques, their attitudes, the ways that different researchers disagree, etc.

[Frederick Gault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly this is only of interest to people who want to know the mechanics and politics of deciphering antique languages. But, IF you are interested in this stuff, as I am, this is a very exciting and clear discussion of how some scary smart people, standing on the shoulders of others did the nearly-impossible and starting reading things written down thousands of years ago in languages long lost.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book that explored the different ways that ancient languages have been deciphered. It also highlighted several languages that have not been cracked yet. Decipherment seems like fun but frustrating work.

See more...

[Maxwell Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books presents the stories of decoding a variety of different ancient writings including Egyptian, Mayan, and Etruscan. It is very well researched. This book, however, takes effort to read if you aren't already familiar with linguistics and deciphering.

[Christopher Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book that shows you how many of the worlds ‘lost languages’ have been deciphered. It has lots of illustrations and examples of the writing being translated and includes a selection of languages still to be deciphered.