Chronicle (1966)

The Decipherment of Linear B (1975x6)

: 10, 1975

For 50 years the strange, mysterious script discovered on baked clay tablets at Knossos in Crete remained undeciphered. Scholars and classicists were baffled. Then, in 1952, Michael Ventris, a young architect, cracked Linear B and electrified the archaeological world. René Cutforth tells the story of the decipherment and of its effect on a long-standing dispute between the grand old man of British archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans, and a young Englishman, Alan Wace, who claimed that Evans's theories about Greece 3,500 years ago were wrong - and who was made to suffer for his heresy. Re-aired 15 December 1977