Pre-Greek languages

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/26/99 6:57:45 PM, sarant at village.uunet.lu wrote:

<<n fact, my gut feeling (totally unscientific) is that Linear A is most
probably Greek.>>

Have you heard anything about the Linear A found at Miletus and Tel Lachish?
It's been difficult tracking where those two stories went.
Below is an abstract from a 1997 symp at UCinn and a 1997 blurb from I think
Antiquities:

<<18-20 April 1997
Margalit Finkelberg Tel Aviv Univ
"Bronze Age Writing: Contacts between East and West"

A fragment of a limestone vessel discovered at the Canaanite site of Tel
Lachish bears an inscription whose script can be identified as
transitional from Linear A to Linear B. The archaeological context
allows us to place the find in the earlier part of the 12th century B.C.,
and the composition of the stone indicates that the inscription was
locally incised. Comparison with the recently published Middle Bronze
Age Minoan graffito on a potsherd excavated at the Canaanite site of Tel
Haror shows a similar pattern: the sherd's composition does not match the
Cretan ceramics, and some ostensibly Linear A signs it bears can only be
properly identified if provided with Linear B parallels.

Considering that the type of clay used in the case of the Middle Bronze
Age Linear A inscription excavated at Miletus indicates, again, that the
pottery was made locally, we can infer that in the second millennium
B.C. a considerable scribal activity involving Aegean scripts took place
along the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

Since it can be shown that the script of the Lachish inscription is
intermediary between Linear A and Linear B, it can further be inferred that
the place where the direct graphic predecessor of Linear B developed should
be sought in areas other than Minoan Crete - a conclusion which goes well
with the evidence supplied by the Middle Helladic inscription in Linear B
recently discovered at Kafkania in the north-western Peloponnese.>>

AND...

<<Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier of the University of
Heidelberg's Archeological Institute has discovered Minoan artifacts
bearing Linear A script on mainland Turkey, marking a strong connection
between the ancient inhabitants of Crete and the mainland to the east...

Niemeier's work began in 1994, at the ruins of Miletus. He had returned
to excavations made there by German teams during the 1950s and 1960s.
Niemeier installed powerful pumps to lower the water table so that he could
explore even deeper levels....

According to Thomas G. Palaima, chairman of the department of classics at the
University of Texas at Austin, "There's absolutely no doubt that this is
Linear A..."

>From the type of clay used, it is apparent that the pottery in Miletus
was made locally. It is also clear that these Linear A symbols were
inscribed before the pot on which they were written was fired. According to
Palaima, these facts (and the observation that one of the signs is rather
rare) suggest that Minoan speakers must have been there-probably as members
of a Minoan colony.>>

Steve Long