Re: Not the VMS but: a second Phaistos disk???

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

24/11/01 04:46:44, Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I don't know... what would be the motive? 

When I was 12 or 13,  I found an Indo-European grammar
in a second-hand bookshop. That gave me the idea of
forging some tablets written in... Proto-Indo-European
of course! I went as far as putting a text together
and designing a writing system (derived from ... Mayan
hieroglyphs!).  I  was only stopped by technical 
considerations: producing the tablets themselves 
(what material? how to age it?)  and where to hide them
so that they would certainly be found.

Why a writing system derived from Maya? Because I had
a list of the calendar glyphs, and  because I had just
found a French translation of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel.
With hindsight, this would have ensured that either my
tablets were never deciphered, or were immediately
identified as a hoax. I had no motive, really, beyond
causing some puzzlement.