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Archaeology & History

4,000-year-old 'CD-ROM' mystery solved

By T.K. Randall
October 25, 2014 · Comment icon 28 comments

A close-up look at the Phaistos Disc. Image Credit: CC BY 1.0 PRA
The images that adorn the enigmatic Phaistos Disc have been puzzling archaeologists for decades.
Discovered by Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in 1908, the mysterious fired clay disk, which is thought to date back almost 4,000 years to 1,700 BC, originates from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete.

Measuring around 15cm in diameter, the disc's unusual circular design and hieroglyphic inscriptions have proven so difficult to decipher that all attempts to interpret them have failed.
The riddle of the disc however may have now finally been solved thanks to Dr Gareth Owens who has succeeded in painstakingly translating some of the symbols. The most commonly recurring symbol is now believed to mean 'Mother' while another translates to "Great lady of importance".

Owens, who has since managed to translate up to 90% of the disc, believes that the artefact exhibits a form of spirally printed prayer that focuses on the concepts of pregnancy and birth.

Source: Yahoo! News | Comments (28)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #19 Posted by CJ1983 10 years ago
"pregnancy and birth" ha it's ancient erotica.
Comment icon #20 Posted by Karasu 10 years ago
Watch it turn out to actually say, "Let's screw with people in the future".
Comment icon #21 Posted by :PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR: 10 years ago
So is not checking the sentence you have just typed for punctuation errors a 5yr-old wouldn't make.
Comment icon #22 Posted by Aisling 10 years ago
Hmm...so with references to pregnancy and birth...is there possibly ones of death? I mean, it does has a spiral on it, and in some ancient cultures a spiral was a symbol of rebirth, of reincarnation. Maybe that's what this is? A record of reincarnations?
Comment icon #23 Posted by kobolds 10 years ago
are they serius ? it take them 6 years to translated few symbols .
Comment icon #24 Posted by kmt_sesh 10 years ago
Here's a decent article on why Owens's "translation" of the artifact is unlikely: Phaistos Disk Deciphered? Not Likely, Say Scholars Owens is a legitimate historian but just another in a long line who've "successfully translated" the disk down through the years. There are valid and well-understood reasons that the disk, at least at present, cannot be deciphered at all.
Comment icon #25 Posted by DieChecker 10 years ago
Phaistos Disk Deciphered? Not Likely, Say Scholars The Phaistos Disk is about 6 inches in diameter and contains on both sides symbols stamped in a spiral formation. 45 different signs—242 in all—are represented on the disk. The disk was discovered in 1908 in an early second millennium B.C.E. palace at Phaistos on Minoan Crete. 6... 45... 242... 1908.... Quick, someone find Robert Langdon (Or maybe just Dan Brown) to figure out this mystery!!
Comment icon #26 Posted by jaylemurph 10 years ago
6... 45... 242... 1908.... Quick, someone find Robert Langdon (Or maybe just Dan Brown) to figure out this mystery!! ...great. Another meme that's going to get thrown around the interwebz by stupid people like it's a real thing. You've just lowered the collective IQ of the world by a point or two. --Jaylemurph
Comment icon #27 Posted by DieChecker 10 years ago
...great. Another meme that's going to get thrown around the interwebz by stupid people like it's a real thing. You've just lowered the collective IQ of the world by a point or two. --Jaylemurph You are welcome. But....... Doesn't that actually bring your own intelligence up a peg by way of removing competition?
Comment icon #28 Posted by Mr Supertypo 10 years ago
its a cargo cult like copy of a cd rom belonging to a 386 used by some time travellers ;-)


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