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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Ultimate Code Breaker Book,
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This review is from: Lost Languages (The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts) (Hardcover)
It's "decipherment's detective appeal" that has led to the current popularity of books by Dan Brown ("The DaVinci Code," for example) and Steve Berry ("The Templar Legacy," for example). These authors' books all deal with an expert in ancient codes breaking those codes to solve a mystery involving ancient history's impact on the present. In "Lost Languages," Robinson discusses how some of the greatest real-life "code breakers" have successfully deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B from Crete, and the Mayan glyphs from Central America. He then proceeds to discuss the unsuccessful but no less fascinating efforts to decipher such ancient scripts as the Etruscan alphabet from Italy, the Rongorongo script from Easter Island, and the Indus script from Pakistan and India. It is truly fascinating to learn how real-life decipherers took an almost uncomprehensible mass of data and contradictory opinions and applied their own kinowledge and impressive logic to break (or try to break) the "codes" of these long-unintelligible scripts. Readers who already have a more than passing interest in languages will find the book especially interesting. Just don't try to read the book when your mind isn't ready to concentrate!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Don't try this at home!,
By Red Fox (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lost Languages (The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts) (Hardcover)
If you are ever tempted to have a crack at deciphering an unknown ancient language, read this book and be talked out of it. The main message of this detached overview is that successfully extracting meaning from a forgotten script is a long, long, long, feat of endurance and hard work involving multiple people with a wide range of skills and a bit of luck.
Some successful decipherments such as the ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics, Linear B (perhaps the most famous) and Mayan glyphs (perhaps the most glamorous) are studied and analysed to pick out the successful strategies, after which the prospects for the main extant hidden languages (linear A, Etruscan and Rongorongo among them) are reviewed, mostly pessimistically. The author has a mix of eye-rolling bemusement and disdain for the legions of amateur (and professional but misguided) would-be decipherers who clearly cause him much pain by invading his professional space, including a barbed plink at 'arrogant' Richard Feynman for his over-hyped claim to have deciphered Mayan glyphs unaided - when in fact as the author points out he simply deciphered the number system, which is usually the simplest part and a convenient entry into a lost script. Fascinating book, I was a bit let down that he mentioned two of my faves - Nordic runes and the Voynich manuscript - only to say that is not going to mention them; but a good read for a certain geeky type of person, of which I am obviously one. And no I won't be rushing to announce my own decoding of Linear A any time soon
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