The languages spoken by early Europeans are still shrouded in mystery. There is nolinguist

The languages spoken by early Europeans are still shrouded in mystery. There is no

linguistic continuity between the languages of Old Europe (a term sometimes used for

Europe between 7000 and 3000 B.C.) and the languages of the modem world, and we

cannot yet translate the Old European script, Scholars have deciphered other ancient

5 languages, such as Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian, which used the cuneiform

script, because of the fortuitous discovery of bilingual inscriptions, When cuneiform

tablets were first discovered in the eighteenth century, scholars could not decipher them.

Then inscriptions found in baa at the end of the eighteenth century provided a link: these

inscriptions were written in cuneiform. and in two other ancient languages, Old Persian

10 and New Elamite--languages that had already been deciphered. It took several decades,

but scholars eventually translated the ancient cuneiform. script. via the more familiar

Old Persian language:

Similarly, the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians remained a mystery until French

troops unearthed the famous Rosetta stone in the late eighteenth century. The stone carried

15 the same message written in ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Egyptian hieratic,

a simplified form. of hieroglyphs. The Rosetta stone thwarted scholars' efforts for several

decades until the early nineteenth century when several key hieroglyphic phrases were

decoded using the Greek inscriptions. Unfortunately, we have no Old European Rosetta

stone to chart correspondences between Old European script. and the languages that

20 replaced it.

Tim incursions of Indo-European tribes into Old Europe from the late fifth to the

early third millennia B.C. caused a linguistic and cultural discontinuity. These incursions

disrupted the Old European sedentary farming lifestyle. that had existed for 3,000 years

As the Indo-Europeans encroached on Old Europe from the east, the continent underwent

25 upheavals. These severely affected the Balkans, where the Old European cultures

abundantly employed script. The Old European way of life deteriorated rapidly, although

pockets of Old European culture remained for several millennia, ~ new peoples spoke

completely different languages belonging to the Indo-European linguistic family. The

Old European language or languages, and the script. used to write them, declined and

eventually vanished.

What does the passage mainly discuss？

A．Reasons for the failure to understand the written records of Old European culture

B．Influences on the development of Old European script

C．Similarities between Old European script. and other ancient writing systems

D．Events leading to the discovery of Old European script