Mycenaean is the oldest known form of the Greek language. It was spoken on the Greek mainland and on Crete in the Mycenaean period, 16th to 12th centuries BC. The language is written on clay tablets in a script called Linear B. Most of these tablets were found in Knossos in central Crete, and in Pylos in the southwest of the Peloponnese. Other tablets have been found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania in Western Crete. 