Download or read book The Man Who Deciphered Linear B The Story of Michael Ventris written by Andrew Robinson and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Highly readable . . . a fitting tribute to the quiet outsider who taught the professionals their business and increased our knowledge of the human past.”—Archaeology Odyssey More than a century ago, in 1900, one of the great archaeological finds of all time was made in Crete. Arthur Evans discovered what he believed was the palace of King Minos, with its notorious labyrinth, home of the Minotaur. As a result, Evans became obsessed with one of the epic intellectual stories of the modern era: the search for the meaning of Linear B, the mysterious script found on clay tablets in the ruined palace. Evans died without achieving his objective, and it was left to the enigmatic Michael Ventris to crack the code in 1952. This is the first book to tell not just the story of Linear B but also that of the young man who deciphered it. Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors, and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson’s riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and contradictory man. Stage by stage, we see how Ventris finally achieved the breakthrough that revealed Linear B as the earliest comprehensible European writing system.
Download or read book The Decipherment of Linear B written by John Chadwick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-09-13 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The languages of the ancient world and the mysterious scripts, long undeciphered, in which they were encoded have represented one of the most intriguing problems of classical archaeology in modern times. This celebrated account of the decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris was written by his close collaborator in the momentous discovery. In revealing the secrets of Linear B it offers a valuable survey of late Minoan and Myceanean archaeology, uncovering fascinating details of the religion and economic history of an ancient civilisation.
Download or read book The Riddle of the Labyrinth written by Margalit Fox and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discovery and deciphering of Europe’s earliest known written language is recounted with “almost nail-biting suspense” in this prize-winning account (Booklist, starred review). In 1900, famed archaeologist Arthur Evans uncovered the ruins of Knossos, a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece’s Classical Age. The massive discovery included a cache of ancient tablets, Europe’s earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain an enigma. Award–winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox follows this intellectual mystery from the Bronze Age Aegean to a legendary archeological dig at the turn of the twentieth century, and on to the brilliant decipherers who finally cracked the code in the 1950s. These include Michael Ventris, the amateur linguist who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of his findings; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
Download or read book Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore written by Rabindranath Tagore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-26 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of some 350 letters spanning Nobel prize-winning writer Rabindranath Tagore's entire life - the first to be available to English readers.
Download or read book Writing and Script A Very Short Introduction written by Andrew Robinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Starting with the origins of writing five thousand years ago, with cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Andrew Robinson explains how these early forms of writing developed into hundreds of scripts including the Roman alphabet and the Chinese characters. He reveals how the modern writing system we take for granted - including airport signage and electronic text messaging - resemble ancient scripts much more closely than we think." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book The Last Man who Knew Everything written by Andrew Robinson and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sudden Genius written by Andrew Robinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genius and breakthroughs appear to involve something magical. Andrew Robinson looks at what science does, and does not, know about exceptional creativity, and applied it to the stories of ten breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, including Curie's discovery of radium and Mozart's composing of The Marriage of Figaro.
Download or read book Lost Languages written by Andrew Robinson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Undeciphered scripts have long tantalized the public, whether it's the possibility of hearing the voices of ancient peoples or the puzzle solver's taste for the challenges posed by breaking codes. Here, Andrew Robinson investigates the most famous examples, beginning with the stories of three great decipherments: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, and the Minoan Linear B clay tablets. He then covers the important scripts that have yet to be cracked, such as the Etruscan alphabet and Rongorongo from Easter Island.
Download or read book Glyph Breaker written by Steven R. Fischer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1997-09-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After successfully deciphering the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers: he is the only person to have deciphered not one but two ancient scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great historical importance. Fischers previous decipherment, of a Cretan artefact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Fischer's decipherment of Rongorongo shows that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorised texts, but was actually read and used for creative composition. This is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who now must rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.
Download or read book Earth Shattering Events Earthquakes Nations and Civilization written by Andrew Robinson and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A truly welcome and refreshing study that puts earthquake impact on history into a proper perspective." --Amos Nur, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, Stanford University, California, and author of Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God Since antiquity, on every continent, human beings in search of attractive landscapes and economic prosperity have made a Faustian bargain with the risk of devastation by an earthquake. Today, around half of the world’s largest cities – as many as sixty – lie in areas of major seismic activity. Many, such as Lisbon, Naples, San Francisco, Teheran, and Tokyo, have been severely damaged or destroyed by earthquakes in the past. But throughout history, starting with ancient Jericho, Rome, and Sparta, cities have proved to be extraordinarily resilient: only one, Port Royal in the Caribbean, was abandoned after an earthquake. Earth-Shattering Events seeks to understand exactly how humans and earthquakes have interacted, not only in the short term but also in the long perspective of history. In some cases, physical devastation has been followed by decline. But in others, the political and economic reverberations of earthquake disasters have presented opportunities for renewal. After its wholesale destruction in 1906, San Francisco went on to flourish, eventually giving birth to the high-tech industrial area on the San Andreas fault known as Silicon Valley. An earthquake in Caracas in 1812 triggered the creation of new nations in the liberation of South America from Spanish rule. Another in Tangshan in 1976 catalysed the transformation of China into the world’s second largest economy. The growth of the scientific study of earthquakes is woven into this far-reaching history. It began with a series of earthquakes in England in 1750. Today, seismologists can monitor the vibration of the planet second by second and the movement of tectonic plates millimeter by millimeter. Yet, even in the 21st century, great earthquakes are still essentially "acts of God," striking with much less warning than volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, and even tornadoes and tsunamis.
Download or read book Halo Graphic Novel New Edition written by Lee Hammock and published by Dark Horse Comics. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edition statement from publisher's website.
Download or read book Linear A The Decipherment of Minoan Language written by Lee Buchwalder and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The language of the Minoan people has remained an enigma for more than a century since their ancient civilization was discovered. The script that records it, known as Linear A, has long been thought to use the same sounds and symbols as its successor-Linear B. After Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, and was found to represent an archaic form of Greek, the language of the earlier Linear A script continued to defy all those attempting to read it. A recent insight regarding synonym-parallels in ancient Minoan texts has now illuminated their meaning for the first time. This book guides the reader through the Linear A decipherment process and provides English translations for many of the most important Minoan artifacts. So enter the labyrinth as Europe's first great civilization is finally given voice after three and a half thousand years, and discover how its people have actually been speaking to us all along.
Download or read book India A Short History A Short History written by Andrew Robinson and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India’s unfolding story, from the ancient Hindu dynasties to the coming of Islam, from the Mughal Empire to the present day India has always been a land of great contradictions. To Alexander the Great, the country was a place of clever naked philosophers and massive armies mounted on elephants – which eventually forced his army to retreat. To ancient Rome, it was a source of luxuries, mainly spices and textiles, paid for in gold—hence the enormous numbers of Roman gold coins excavated in India. At the height of the Mughal empire in 1700, India boasted 24 percent of the world economy—a share virtually equal to Europe’s 25 percent. But then its economy declined. Colonial India was known for its extremes of wealth and poverty, epitomized by the Taj Mahal and famines, maharajas and untouchables, and also for its spirituality: many-armed Hindu gods and Buddhist philosophy, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. India: A Short History places as much emphasis on individuals, ideas and cultures as on the rise and fall of kingdoms, political parties and economies. Anyone curious about a great civilization, and its future, will find this an ideal introduction, at times controversial, written by an author who has been strongly engaged with India for more than three decades.
Download or read book Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology written by Andrew Robinson and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the evolution of science and technology, laws governing exceptional creativity and innovation have yet to be discovered. In his influential study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the historian Thomas Kuhn noted that the final stage in a scientific breakthrough such as Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity—the most crucial step—was “inscrutable.” The same is still true half a century later. Yet, there has been considerable progress in understanding many stages and facets of exceptional creativity and innovation. In Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology, editor Andrew Robinson gathers diverse contributors to explore this progress. This new collection arises from a symposium with the same title held at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. Organized by the John Templeton Foundation, the symposium had the late distinguished doctor and geneticist Baruch S. Blumberg as its chair. At the same time, its IAS host was the well-known physicist Freeman J. Dyson—both of whom have contributed chapters to the book. In addition to scientists, engineers, and an inventor, the book’s fifteen contributors include an economist, entrepreneurs, historians, and sociologists, all working at leading institutions, including Bell Laboratories, Microsoft Research, Oxford University, Princeton University, and Stanford University. Each contributor brings a unique perspective to the relationships between exceptional scientific creativity and innovation by individuals and institutions. The diverse list of disciplines covered, the high-profile contributors (including two Nobel laureates), and their fascinating insights into this overarching question—how exactly do we make breakthroughs?—will make this collection of interest to anyone involved with the creative process in any context. Still, it will especially appeal to readers in scientific and technological fields.
Download or read book The Mycenaean World written by John Chadwick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1976-03-25 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Chadwick summarizes the results of research into Mycenaean Greece.
Download or read book Cracking the Egyptian Code written by Andrew Robinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1799 Napoleon's army uncovered an ancient stele in the Nile delta. Its inscription, recorded in three distinct scripts--ancient Greek, Coptic, and hieroglyphic--would provide scholars with the first clues to unlocking the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs, a language lost for nearly two millennia. More than twenty years later a remarkably gifted Frenchman named Jean-Francois Champollion successfully deciphered the hieroglyphs on the stele, now commonly known as the Rosetta Stone, sparking a revolution in our knowledge of ancient Egypt. Cracking the Egyptian Code is the first biography in English of Champollion, widely regarded as the founder of Egyptology. Andrew Robinson meticulously reconstructs how Champollion cracked the code of the hieroglyphic script, describing how Champollion started with Egyptian obelisks in Rome and papyri in European collections, sailed the Nile for a year, studied the tombs in the Valley of the Kings (a name he first coined), and carefully compared the three scripts on the Rosetta Stone to penetrate the mystery of the hieroglyphic text. Robinson also brings to life the rivalry between Champollion and the English scientist Thomas Young, who claimed credit for launching the decipherment, which Champollion hotly denied. There is much more to Champollion's life than the Rosetta Stone and Robinson gives equal weight to the many roles he played in his tragically brief life, from a teenage professor in Revolutionary France to a supporter of Napoleon (whom he met), an exile, and a curator at the Louvre. Extensively illustrated in color and black-and-white pictures, Cracking the Egyptian Code will appeal to a wide readership interested in Egypt, decipherment and code-breaking, and Napoleon and the French Revolution.
Download or read book Minoan Linear A written by David W. Packard and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
