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I sometimes wonder how much further we well be able to lift the veil of ignorance covering early civilizations (assuming our ongoing existence, cultural interes

I sometimes wonder how much further we well be able to lift the veil of ignorance covering early civilizations (assuming our ongoing existence, cultural interest in the past and ever more powerful technologies in the aeons to come). Clearly there must be additional Linear A inscriptions in Crete and possibly elsewhere. The cost of finding them enters a spiral of diminishing returns, but that may be remedied at some point. But, even so, there is no guarantee that even with all surving artefacts uncovered we would be able to reconstruct the language. Pressumably that "edge of knowledgeable history" calculus plays across many regions and sometimes ignorance is annoyingly "close" to the modern era. Even long after the invention of writing the vast majority of human culture was not recorded and is essentially lost.

p-e-w 3y ago
> Clearly there must be additional Linear A inscriptions in Crete and possibly elsewhere. There are probably many of them in storage in various museums and antiquities departments. The vast majority of ancient inscriptions ever found are uncatalogued, and some have never even been looked at. This includes inscriptions in languages we already know how to read. I remember reading long ago somewhere that well over 90% of all known Egyptian hieroglyphics texts haven't been translated yet. Therefore, my guess is that once AI is good enough to do classification and translation automatically, there will be rapid progress, without requiring any new discoveries.