Writing on Writing Materials (Part-2)
Some unfinished business with the Greeks and Romans In the first part, I wrote about the writing materials used by the ancient Greeks. But what I did not mention was their very first writing material, simply because, I did not know about it at that time. It was only after publishing the blog I acquired the information, and therefore decided to share it with you in this article. As it seems, the Mycenaean-Greeks, who were the earliest Greek-speaking people, started writing on the same material which the Mesopotamians used to write on. Yes, correct – clay tablets! It is also worth mentioning that their script was very distinctive from the present Greek script we all recognise. The researchers named this script ‘Linear B’ (which, in my opinion, is a very insipid name). The earliest examples of such clay tablets come from 1450 BCE. Unfortunately, just about three and a half centuries later (around 1100 BCE), came the Greek dark age, when the skill of writing was almost forgotten. B