In 1908, an archaeologist in Crete discovered a small clay disk bearing unknown symbols. Now known as the Phaistos disk, it remains a modern enigma. The Phaistos disk from circa 1700 B.C. The signs ...

Decoding ancient scripts is a remarkable journey into humanity’s past, unearthing forgotten tales and cultures. The cryptic symbols, etched onto stone, parchment, or clay, often remain as the only ...

Researchers have managed to decode an ancient script that scholars have been unable to understand for decades. In a study published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society, a team of ...

The room we are in is locked. It is windowless and lit from above by a fluorescent bulb. In the hallway outside—two stories beneath the city of London—attendants in dark suits patrol silently, giving ...

Deciphering a previously unknown script could unlock a better understanding of the ancient Kushan Empire of Central Asia. The unknown Kushan script was found in the 1950s, but only understood this ...

Researchers have partially deciphered the "unknown Kushan script" — a writing system that has puzzled linguists since it was first found in the 1950s. The researchers decoded the ancient text using ...

Over the past century, archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,600 Proto-Elamite inscriptions, but only about 43 in Linear Elamite, scattered widely across Iran. Illustration by Meilan Solly / ...

A fish under a roof. A stick figure without a head. A series of lines that look like a garden rake. These symbols are part of an entirely undeciphered script from a sophisticated ancient civilization ...

It took more than 20 years to translate the Rosetta stone. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Some ancient societies had written ...