Anthropology Interview Question:

What is the significant of the phaistos disk? Has anyone translated it?

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This is a little outside my main area of expertise, but here is what I know. The disk features writing that is unique. Some of the symbols replicate ones from other Minoan (Bronze Age Cretan) script, but many of them are unique to this artifact. There are many published claims of "translations" of the disk, but no consensus among experts. (You can use Google to locate many of these, but much of what I found is "fringe scholarship", i.e., non-peer review.)

No other examples of this kind of inscribed disk are known and the original archaeological provenance of the original disk is unclear. The disk was found in 1903. That we have found no other examples of this kind of writing or medium in the countless excavations carried out on Crete suggests to me that this disk is a forgery. Somebody probably made it based on the limited published information about the Minoan civilization in the early 1900s and passed it off as having been found in a Minoan site.
Submitted by: Administrator