I enjoyed this brief overview of many of the world's undeciphered scripts. Some of these I had not heard of, or had heard very little about, such as the Phaistos Disc and the Zapotec and Isthmian scripts. It was an easy read and the stories flowed well. I enjoyed Andrew Robinson's commentaries and opinions. At times he tells you to try to figure a problem out by looking at a picture or chart. (I never did spend time figuring any of it out, I just kept reading for the answers.)

Because of all the different scripts mentioned in the book, there isn't a lot of detail about any of them. It's a good introductory text. I have read several books about the Maya hieroglyphs (all reputable) and I might explore more books that talk about some of these scripts in more detail. I'll have to be careful - it sounds like there is a lot of information published about these scripts and not all of it can be trusted.

This book is copyrighted in 2002 and I'm curious to know if anything new has been discovered or if any more progress on decipherment has been made in the last 12 years.

I was disappointed in all of the typos in the book. That does not, of course, affect my rating, but it was frustrating to read a non-fiction book on language that was not adequately proof read! ( )

Andrew Robinson has written a book about lost languages and lost writing systems for the layman. After an excellent introduction which gives all the details needed to read and understand the rest of the book, he goes on to tell the stories of three systems which have been deciphered: Egyptians hieroglyphs, Linear B and Mayan glyphs. All three had numerous examples and could be matched to a known language. In the case of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Rosetta stone proved invaluable with its hieroglyph, demotic and Greek sections. Linear B was discovered in Crete and thought to be Minoan, but was actually an early form of Greek. The Mayan language is still spoken today. But, until the discovery and understanding of the Mayan calendar, it did not seem to match the language. Not all the glyphs have been indentified but enough to very some readings.

Then Robinson goes on to the undeciphered writings: among them the Etruscan alphabet (Is it pre-Greek?), Linear A (a relative of Linear B), Rongorongo from Easter Island, and the Indus script. He ends with the Phaistos disc from Crete which may be impossible to translate since there is only the disc and one vase which may or may not be in the same script.

Robinson's conclusions are that some of these languages and writings may be translated (at least partially) with more and more architectural findings and some may never be known. Surely over time, we will find more mysteries as well.

The book has a system in lieu of footnotes called notes and references but Robinson does a good job of citing sources in his text. He also gives credits for all of his numerous illustrations broken down by chapter in the back of the book. There also is an exhaustive bibliography and, for the interested layperson, books and websites for further study. The index is excellent and breaks down entries into bold type for major entries, regular type for mentions, and italics for illustrations, thus making it easy to go back and refer to a previously covered topic. And the language used in the text is easily accessible to all readers.

I can highly recommend this book to interested persons. ( )

An overview of the world's most well known hard-to-decipher scripts, ranging from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Indus valley script. Largely a history of the attempts, rarely successful, at deciphering. So, a lot of names, and oddball theories. Illustrated throughout with examples of the scripts, photographs of relics such as the Rosetta Stone, help make the book more accessible and relieve some of the strain from the name dumps. It also contains some history of areas that I was not that aware of, such as the Indus valley circa 400 BCE, the Elam culture, and Cush with its undeciphered Meroitic.
I'm not all that sure why I'm giving it three stars, when it contains so much that I like and it's presented so well. But it is fairly boring, as it's almost too thorough in describing unsuccessful attempts. Maybe I'm not as into this as I think I am.
3 stars oc. ( )

I happen to have a thing about historical mysteries, and I also happen to have a thing about the history of writing. These two interests of mine seem to have come together admirably in Andrew Robinson's Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts.

'Lost Languages' is a bit of a misnomer in this case. 'Lost Writing Systems' would've been a more accurate if less poetic title. While lost languages often walk hand in hand with lost writing systems, that isn't always expressly the case, as Robinson makes clear. For example, the famous case of the decipherment of Linear B showed that the Linear B tablets recorded a very archaic form of Greek. Likewise, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs expressed a form of archaic Egyptian quite similar to Coptic, which was still a living (if only strictly liturgical) language. This isn't a book about the lost languages, it's a book about lost writing systems (in the sense that their meaning is largely lost to us), and about attempts at decipherment. What makes this book fascinating is how culture often seems to inform the decipherment of scripts. As such, Robinson throws in a lot about the history of each culture, as well as the technical details of decipherment. Robinson gives us a taste of the history of writing, bringing to live a human need that has spanned the ages.

This need is the need to organise, record and remember, and it is the single most fascinating thing about this book. People say we now live in an 'Information Society'; but I believe that we always have, just in ways that have been limited by the available tools and infrastructure around us. This desire to order and make sense of our world has led to the invention of many hundreds of different scripts, of varying degrees of complexity and efficiency (Robinson highlights the fact that Japanese is the most inefficient writing system in the world, yet Japan has one of the world's highest levels of literacy). Throughout time, human ingenuity has been funnelled into the activity of writing and recording, even if it means re-inventing the wheel again and again.

More of this review here:- http://digisqueeb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/from-shelf-lost-languages-by-andrew.htm... ( )

This is a good book for discovering the basic of deciphering the scripts, glyphs and alphabets of lost languages. It is about the people, the process and the politics of decipherment. For someone with no knowledge of decipherment and lost languages, this book is excellent.