I am inviting comment on an experimental approach to bridging the gap between Homeric and Mycenaean Greek in a paper to be found on Academia.edu.- From Linear B to Mycenaean Epic
The paper investigates the question: what expansion of the Linear B syllabary would be needed to transform it from a utilitarian recordkeepers and administrative shorthand into a language capable of expressing prose and poetry?
The work is speculative, being a collaborative exercise blending experimental linguistics, Generative AI, vibe coding and genuine human programming. It is intended to explore the boundaries of Linear B as a book-keeping system and Mycenaean Greek as a spoken language.
Speculatively, I would not assume Linear B to be nothing more than a book keeping system. Just looking at the symbols themselves suggests to me that the civilisation already had a firm grasp of base physics and quantities and so some form of mathematics and already had a long established religious history with deep symbology. I surmise that very little survives of anything other than book-keeping. If I look at my own bookshelves, the novels and stories become worn and tattered from years of handling whilst the business and finance records I keep are more securely locked away and largely untouched from one year to the next.
My speculation actually brings me to wonder if there was actually a dark age at all. When one considers the timelines of the city of Sodom, apparently destroyed by 1900BC yet spoken of in much of greek literature as a city of presence. Rather than Mycenaean to Homeric being a linear flow perhaps we are simply observing two completely different cultures and incorrectly attributing one to the other.