Re: The Associated Press: Experts trying to decipher ancient language

This appears to be a ca. 800 B.C. dialect of Etruscan.
The basic stock of characters (ca. 70%) match with what we know of 700 B.C. Etruscan.
There is a significant carryover (ca. 20%) of characters from Linear B as we know it.
The remaining few characters (ca. 10%) seem to be aftermarket simplifications of Linear B, a phenomenon of simplifying the parent script as we have seen in e.g. the Los Lunas stone with Paleohebrew.
In sum, it appears to be the writing of a people closely related to but half a millennium earlier than the Etruscans we know of south of Rome.
Some of the characters [two] are not syllables, but numbers, namely 10 and 50.
From David Grant Stewart, Sr. Sun, 1 Mar 2009 12:28 pm