The decipherment of any ancient language throughout history has always required a textual anchor; something like the Rosetta Stone, which contained a bilingual text, or the existence of a known related language to provide a means of comparison. However, the "Linear A" script, which is the writing system of the Minoan civilization on the Greek island of Crete, lacks both of these.
This script is described as a "language isolate" because it has no confirmed links to any other living or dead language. This fact has turned Linear A into a significant challenge for linguists over the past century. The situation of the "Etruscan" language in Italy, which was prevalent before the Roman Empire, is only slightly better; despite gathering some vocabulary from funerary inscriptions, its grammar and deeper meanings still remain out of researchers' reach. Now, researchers hope that artificial intelligence can solve these ancient enigmas by analyzing complex patterns.