The art of writ­ing may be con­sid­ered one of the most ex­tra­or­di­nary tech­nolo­gies ever born from the hu­man mind. His­tor­i­cally, the process of the in­ven­tion of writ­ing is con­sid­ered to be con­cluded when the un­der­stand­ing comes that not only can the graphic traces which ex­press, fix and trans­mit the ideas and feel­ings of an in­di­vid­ual ex­is­tence be tran­scribed, but also that these very ideas and feel­ings may have a name made up of sounds and that these sounds can be rep­re­sented graph­i­cally. In Mi­noan Crete, such a salient tran­si­tion from “homo lo­quens” to “homo scribens” took place in the 2nd mil­len­nium BC, when the is­land be­came the birth­place of what are thought to be “the most an­cient writ­ing sys­tems in Eu­rope”. As re­gards Lin­ear A, this script ex­tended be­yond Crete, as the cul­tural ex­pan­sion of the Mi­noan civ­i­liza­tion spread into the Aegean basin, as far as the Pelo­pon­nese and the Syro-Pales­tin­ian coast.

This study there­fore in­tends to fo­cus on the re­la­tions be­tween Crete and Thera sug­gested by the writ­ten ev­i­dence. In the light of new first-hand ex­am­i­na­tions and an over­all re­vi­sion of the cur­rently avail­able doc­u­men­ta­tion, spe­cial at­ten­tion is paid to the Theran epi­graphic ev­i­dence of Lin­ear A. Fur­ther ob­ser­va­tions on the ma­son’s marks found in Akrotiri are also pro­vided.