For more than a century scholars have wondered who were the Minoans, where did they come from, how did they become so powerful? It was hoped that translation of their inscriptions would proved answers, and they do. The Minoans were a mix of Danes, Swedes, Finns and Poles, who soon attracted Sumerians, Egyptians and masons from Lake Van to their island ruled by women. From 2093 BC to 1447 BC, Minoans inscribed a variety of objects with a syllabic script called Linear A. The language is Finnish. Each character represents an everyday object, whose name begins with the sound of the letter. A variety of techniques helped to compress words, such that 1700 different words could be written with just one syllable, 8000 words with two syllables.