How Linear B was Lost

HOW LINEAR B WAS LOST #linearb #mycenaeangreece

How does a culture lose literacy?

In the case of LINEAR B I think these were the major factors

Use of perishable materials

Linear B is known only from clay tablets but it may have also been inscribed on leather parchment or embroidered on clothing or inscribed on lead or metal tablets.

All of these can be burnt smashed or decay.

It may be that the rooms in which tablets were found were holding areas until accounts could be copied from clay onto more permanent materials. Or materials the Mycenaean Scribes thought were more permanent. It may be that poetry or chronicles were kept in the lost upper storeys of palaces and I can see lead or gold tablets being melted down for jewellery or loom weights.

Lack of backup.

No copies on other stronger media

Limited literacy.

The location of surviving tablets and a few reference in stories suggest only priests palace scribes and and aristocrats had any ability or training in reading and writing and probably very few of them!

Kill off the elite and with no one to train the next generation ....

THE peasants are revolting

I rather suspect the truth behind the  Return of the Heraclids tradition of a Dorian "invasion" was that people claiming a link to Heracles as the Champion of the People Against Monsters probably delibarately burnt archives to destroy land deeds and tax records.

Also remember paper and printing had not yet been discovered and the concept of having inscriptions on pottery and gravestones or statue plinths dates centuries later.