Speculation..............................

In case we ever needed reminding about how much we don't know, here comes the Phaistos Disc. Discovered in 1908 by an Italian archaeologist digging in a Minoan palace in Crete, the fired-clay disc is stamped with glyphs on both sides.  Based on the location of the discovery, it was estimated that the Phaistos Disc dates to 1700 BC.  What does it mean?  This is where the fun begins:  "Most experts believe the symbols have some sort of hidden meaning, theorizing that its message may have been a geometric theorem, a board game, a prayer, or a mythological story.  Some experts speculate that the pictograms may have been use phonetically, in a manner similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics.  However, no other samples of the script have been found and efforts to decipher the text have proved unsuccessful.....Some experts contend that the employment of reusable characters to make an reproduce a body of text means that the Phaistos Disc represents the earliest known example of ancient movable type printing."   Adding to the fun, at least one expert believes the Phaistos Disc is a hoax.

The quotation used above was taken from Scott Christianson's 100 Diagrams That Changed The World