This civilisation is famous all over the world for its magnificent palaces, decorated with frescoes. The most notable palaces are Knossos and Phaistos. The Minoan cities were also well-advanced with roads, water and sewage facilities through pipes.
Buildings with flat, tile roofs and walls made of stone. They wrote in one of the oldest scriptures in Europe, the Linear A, which has not been deciphered yet. The Disc of Phaistos is a clay tablet with signs and words of the Linear A and is exhibited in the Archaeological Museum in the town of Heraklion. Agriculture was the main income for the Cretans. The bottom line is that by the 14th century B. Mycenaean material culture became ubiquitous in the south Aegean Sea, where once Minoan influence had been strong.
It was quite the reversal of fate. In the centuries before the eruption, Cretan culture had exercised notable influence on the Greek mainland. With the administration, perhaps even religious authority collapsed. If the eruption did not break the backbone of Minoan civilization, it may have fractured its economy, and Mycenae - the powerhouse of mainland Greece — exploited that.
This theory is supported by the fact that the eruption destroyed the Theran port that had been aligned with Crete and Knossos, plausibly enabling the Mycenaeans to develop their own trading hubs, such as the other largest site in the Cyclades, namely Phylakopi, on Milos. There is no doubt that Phylakopi was instrumental in promoting the Mycenaean Greek language and writing, Linear B, as the lingua franca of Aegean economy after the eruption. Human sacrifice and King Minos the Terrible.
By the time of the classical authors of Greece and Rome B. Epimenides, a Knossian philosopher and soothsayer of the 7th century B. Even so, the ancient Greek myths refer to Crete time and again - perhaps because of their common origin. One myth tells of Europa, a beautiful Phoenician princess whom Zeus seduced in the guise of a bull. Minos, according to another legend, ordered the construction of a labyrinth, in which the fabled half-bull half-man Minotaur resided. Myth has it that after losing a war with Crete, the people of Athens were compelled every nine years to send seven boys and seven girls as sacrifices to the Minotaur.
These youths were released into the labyrinth, where they would wander and the Minotaur would eat them. While the Minotaur was legend, archaeology has found evidence for human sacrifice in ancient Greek circles, including at Knossos and at the sacred site of Anemospilia, a few kilometers to the south.
Climate modeller Mike Rampino at New York University calculated that the eruption on Thera could have lowered annual average temperatures by one to two degrees across Europe, Asia and North America.
Rampino believes the summer temperatures would have dropped even more, suggesting years of cold, wet summers and ruined harvests. Ancient logs preserved for millennia in Irish bogs contain a record of the weather - and especially the cold, wet periods that stunt trees' growth. Trees that were growing at the time of the eruption - 3, years ago - show signs that the climate was especially wet and cold then.
Floyd McCoy believes the volcano undermined the Minoans for years. First, it destroyed an entire island that had been crucial to their trade. Then, giant waves battered the Minoan coasts, destroying coastal villages and boats at harbour. Next, the Minoans faced summers of ruined harvests.
Knossos archaeologist Colin MacDonald thinks the effects of these disasters were compounded by something more - the Minoans began to see their world in a different way. MacDonald believes the Minoan people, stripped of their certainties, stopped obeying the priest kings in palaces like Knossos. This marked the start of a year decline for the entire Minoan civilisation. They were in no position to fight back when Greeks from the mainland took control of the island. For McCoy, this was the answer - an explanation of how one of the mightiest volcanoes ever witnessed could fell the great Minoan civilisation.
The volcano struck the Minoans in ways only modern science could start to quantify. The effects were lethal. Jessica Cecil has worked in television for 15 years. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled.
Crete lay at the center of an extensive trading network dealing in copper from the Cyclades and tin from Asia Minor. These materials were essential for producing bronze, a commodity that brought power and prestige to the Minoans. In the second millennium B. Evans excavated several of these structures, including the magnificent Palace of Knossos, seat of the legendary King Minos.
More recent archaeological digs have demonstrated that Crete was widely urbanized during this period and that Knossos exercised some kind of hegemony over other Cretan cities. The mid-second millennium B. It has never been firmly established whether Minoan Crete had a true royal dynasty, so these lavish palaces may have had mixed secular and religious roles.
Some archaeologists interpret these palaces more as civic centers from which to control and distribute raw materials, carry out rituals, mete out justice, maintain water distribution, and also organize festivals for the populace. Daily life was, for the majority, simple but comfortable.
Islanders lived in houses made of stone, mud brick, and wood, and the domestic economy was based on viticulture and olive farming. The surrounding cypress forests provided timber for shipbuilding for the important Minoan fleet. The Aegina Treasure is a trove of gold artifacts, like this two-headed pendant, featuring strong Minoan characteristics. Dating to between and B. It is believed that the pieces were originally from a Cretan necropolis, perhaps that of Chrysolakkos in Mallia.
Little evidence has been found of city walls or fortifications built on ancient Crete during this time. This finding seems to suggest that either there were no serious threats to the island or—more likely—that patrolling ships were enough to guard its coastlines.
A maritime force would have also protected the trading routes, harbors, and strategic points, such as Amnisos, the port that served the capital, Knossos.
As Minoan culture and trade radiated across the Aegean, communities on the islands of the Cyclades and the Dodecanese near the coast of modern-day Turkey were radically changed through contact with Crete. Cretan fashions became very popular in the eastern Mediterranean. Local island elites first acquired Cretan pottery and textiles as a symbol of prestige.
Perhaps the clearest sign of Minoan influence was the appearance of its writing system in the languages of later cultures. One of the oldest was discovered by Arthur Evans and is now known as Linear A. Despite not yet being deciphered, scholars believe it is the local language of Minoan Crete. But it must have been an important regional common language of its day, as Linear A has been found inscribed on many of the clay vessels discovered on islands across the Aegean.
The other script, called Linear B, evolved from Linear A.
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