That's not the explanation, it's just the first sentence (as an example of the tone, I presume): > It's basically a giant jigsaw puzzle. > You find some rock

That's not the explanation, it's just the first sentence (as an example of the tone, I presume): > It's basically a giant jigsaw puzzle. > You find some rock that has the same text in two languages (the rosetta stone for example helped decipher old egyptian) > Then you read more and more texts and reconstruct new words from context. Often you have multiple possible interpretations but then new texts are found and you can improve your old assumptions with a new context. https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/myt3dc/eli5_how_can_archaeologists_translate_ancient/gvwrmlv/ https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/myt3dc/e...