Amateur may have cracked Linear A, a 120-year-old puzzle
aiclambake.com
June 19, 2026
5 min read
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66/100
Summary
Tom Di Mino, a self-taught AI engineer, claims to have deciphered the Bronze-age Minoan writing system known as Linear A, a challenge that has perplexed linguistics experts for over a century. His claims are currently under review by linguistics experts at Rutgers and Cambridge.
Key Takeaways
- Tom Di Mino claims to have deciphered Linear A, a Bronze-age Minoan writing system, which has been a challenge for linguists for over a century.
- Di Mino believes that Linear A corresponds to an extinct Semitic language that is a precursor to biblical Hebrew.
- His breakthrough in deciphering Linear A came from analyzing a series of prayer inscriptions, leading to the identification of the root "nawaya," meaning "to dwell."
- Di Mino's claims are currently under review by linguistics experts at Rutgers and Cambridge.
Coverage & discussions
Hacker News · aiclambake.com
Community discussions
Community Sentiment
Positives
- Tom's approach has produced credible results, translating over 300 words of Linear A, which is unprecedented and could lead to significant breakthroughs in understanding ancient scripts.
- The involvement of Claude Code in Tom's work highlights the potential of AI tools to assist in complex linguistic challenges, opening new avenues for research.
- This attempt at decipherment is exciting and could revolutionize our understanding of Linear A, pending further validation from experts.
Concerns
- There is skepticism about the validity of the claims until they are verified by experts, emphasizing the need for caution in accepting the results as conclusive.
- The fragmentary nature of the Linear A corpus raises concerns about the reliability of any decipherment attempts, as many texts consist of short lists and abbreviations.
