Eli5: How are ancient languages decoded with no key or reference?
In: Earth Science
There are multiple ancient languages which have not been decoded – precisely due to absence of any reference. You need some sort of key to start, however small.
A lot of them aren’t. We only decoded ancient egyptian because of the rosetta stone having the same message in 3 languages, including egyptian. If there is a path of child languages to work through and follow changes its “easier” but still difficult.
Linguistics and etymology can be pretty fascinating.
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