The ancient disk we still can't read

A closer look

You’d think with all our AI and linguistic PhDs, we could read a literal clay frisbee from 1700 BC. Nope. Discovered in a Minoan palace on Crete, the Phaistos Disc is covered in spiral-stamped symbols—including a bald guy, a meat cleaver, and a beehive—that match exactly zero known languages. It’s essentially the world’s oldest, most frustrating captcha. Because the symbols were pressed into the clay using pre-made seals, it’s also the earliest known example of movable type printing. All that technological innovation, and it might just be an ancient grocery list.