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A. Decline of the Minoan Civilization In 2000 B. C. E, the Greeks settled the lands that were surrounded by the waters of the Aegean Sea and created a culture that shaped Western heritage forever.
The Greeks made history when they settled in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria-Palestine. The first cultures in Greece arose in the later 3 rd and 2 nd millennia: the Minoans on Crete and the Mycenaean's on the mainland. These are the cultures that were the source of later Greek myths, and whose religious and social structures influenced so much of later Greece and Europe. The great palaces, fortifications and tombs are testimony to the achievements of these people. Most of what we know about both cultures has been gained through archaeology. Though both were literate, Minoan texts are still almost unreadable, and the Mycenaean tablets are mostly bureaucratic inventories.
Thus material evidence is critical for understanding and reconstructing these fascinating cultures. About 725 B. C. E, Sparta embarked on a path that made it Greece's most respected military power.
The state wanted all of its men to be superb soldiers, and it persuaded them to sacrifice privacy and comfort to physical conditioning, military training, and discipline. Athens evolved slower then Spartan society. Years of consistent cultivation diminished the Athenian fields, which lead them to slavery. Athenians were sold abroad.
During the Bronze Age period, Greek civilization was evolving in the Aegean World. The Aegean World was divided into three developing parts: on the island of Crete, on the smaller islands of the Aegean Sea, and on the mainland of Greece. Aegean's first civilization was on Crete, which was a bridge between the older civilization of the East and settled land by the Greeks. Crete was inhabited from the sixth millennium B. C, but it was later, probably around the late fourth-early third millennium that immigrants from Asia Minor founded a genuine civilization (Demand 12).
In the Bronze Age most tools and weapons were made of bronze. It had been thought that the use of bronze had originated in the Middle East, but discoveries near Ban Chiang and Thailand, indicate that bronze technology was known there as early as 4500 BC. Bronze objects have been found in Asia Minor that date from before 3000 BC. The Bronze Age in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean has been divided into three phases - early, middle, and late. The early phase is characterized by increased use of the metal. It was the time of the Sumerian civilization and the rise of Akkad to prominence in Mesopotamia; it also generated the spectacular treasures of Troy (Nystrom 31).
Babylon reached its height of glory during the middle Bronze Age. Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece were major late-Bronze-Age civilizations. The Bronze Age there ended about 1200 BC, after which iron technology became common. The Minoan civilization began on the island of Crete; a large island located midway between Asia Minor and Greece. As an island, it was isolated from the mainland of Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Egypt. As the population began to thrive, it also began to increase, and it is evident that the resources of the island became increasingly insufficient to handle the increased population.
Some migrated, populating other islands in the Aegean Sea. They took their growing civilization with them and spread Minoan culture, religion, and government all over the Aegean Sea. For this reason, the Minoan culture is also called the "Aegean Palace Civilization. " Crete became the central exporter of wine, oil, jewelry, and highly crafted works; in turn, they became importers of raw materials and food. In the process they built the first major navy in the world; its primary purpose, however, was mercantile. We know of the Minoans only through their ruins. Splendid as they are, with their remarkable architectural logic, their hypnotic art, and the richness of cultural artifacts, they spoke a language we don't understand and they wrote in a script, which we can't read.
Many walls carried murals showing landscapes, seascapes, festivals, and sports (Kagan 23). Minoan culture reached its height in the 2 nd millennium BC at Knossos, Phaestos, Maria, and other flourishing centers. Little was known about Minoan culture before the discovery of a great palace at Knossos by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, who named the culture it represented Minoan, in association with Minos, the legendary king. The palace at Knossos was probably damaged by an earthquake about 1700 BC, a date that marked the end of one phase of the early history of Crete.
A new dynasty developed an even more brilliant culture. The palace at Knossos was rebuilt on a more elaborate scale; it rose to three or four stories and contained many extensive rooms and passages and a luxuriously decorated throne room. Conspicuous among the many paintings was scenes of bull leaping, a sport that may have given rise to the later Greek myth of the Minotaur. Sanctuaries within the palace provided a place for the worship of a mother goddess, probably the one called Rhea by the Greeks (Nystrom 34). Associated with her worship was the double ax, pictures of which appear on some of the walls of the palace. In the ruins were also found handsome examples of sculpture and metalwork.
Evidence exists that the Minoans had a complex system of weights and measures. They knew how to make fine burnished pottery, frequently decorated with incised geometric motifs, and were capable of building stone houses, though they also still made use of caves for habitation. Metals were as yet unknown and the tools and weapons they needed (hammers, axes, knives etc. ) were made of a range of hard stones. The kings of Knossos attained their greatest power about 1600 BC, when they controlled the entire Aegean area and traded extensively with Egypt.
The destruction of Knossos and the collapse of Minoan culture coincided with the beginning of the most flourishing period of Mycenaean civilization in Greece; this coincidence suggests that the warlike Mycenaean's attacked and destroyed the Minoan civilization. The Knossos is the most famous archaeological site on Crete. It contains the ruins of the largest and most luxurious Minoan palace, built in the middle of a large town. The first palace was built around 2000 BC and destroyed around 1700 BC.
The second one was built immediately afterward, more magnificent than the first. This was also destroyed, around 1500 BC, most likely by the terrible eruption of the volcano on Santorini. Findings on Crete after 1900 revealed some 3000 clay tablets inscribed with two scripts, called Linear A and Linear B. The earlier of the two, employed by the Minoans, was Linear A and it was already flourishing about 1750 BC. Minoans also added inked Linear A inscriptions to stone and terra-cotta vessels. The Linear B tablets found at Cnossus [on the island of Crete] are pedestrian documents (Kagan 23).
A unique clay disk found at the site of Phaestos is often adduced as the earliest example of printing-that is, reproducing written text by using "letter" stamps; the disk was stamped on both sides, while still wet, with a series of seal stones comprising a set of 45 symbols. Linear B tablets were found on Crete and also at Pylos and Mycenae on the Greek mainland; the majority of tablets are dated between 1400 BC and 1150 BC. In 1952 the British architect and cryptographer Michael Ventris and John Chadwick deciphered Linear B and identified the language it transcribes as an early Greek dialect. Caves were first used in Crete as dwellings or at least as habitation sites in the Neolithic period.
Toward the end of the Neolithic, they also began to be used extensively as cemeteries, and such usage continued throughout the early Minoan period and in some areas even longer. Caves appear to have first been used as cult places early in the Middle Minoan period, at more or less the same time when the first Cretan palaces were being constructed. There may very well be some connection between the establishment of powerful central authorities in the palaces and the institution of worship in caves. The evidence for the use of caves as cult places consists of pottery, animal figurines, and occasionally bronze objects. Such objects are found not only in caves, which had previously served habitation or funerary purposes, but also in caves that had the earliest known functions housing of some religious activity.
In addition to artifacts, some cult caves contain large quantities of animal bones, mostly from deer, oxen, and goats and no doubt derived from some form of animal sacrifice. One of the better-known cult caves is the "Cave Of Eileithyia" near Amnisos, associated with the divinity Eileithyia on the basis of a reference in Homer's Odyssey. The caves that have furnished by far the richest assortments of objects are: the Kamares Cave, on the south slope of Mt. Ida at about 6000 feet; the Dictaean or Psycho Cave, on the west side of the Lasithi Plain in the foot hills of Mt.
Date; the Ideas Cave, on the west side of the Neda Plain and on the northern slopes of Mt. Ida, and the Arkalochori Cave, not far south of the newly discovered palace at Galatas. The decline of the Minoan civilization in the Late Minoan period coincided with the rise of the first great civilization of the Greek mainland, the Mycenaean, which reached its peak between 1500 and 1200 BC. Named after the ancient city of Mycenae, it is also known as the Achaean civilization after the Indo-European branch of migrants who had settled on mainland Greece and absorbed many aspects of Minoan culture. Unlike Minoan society, where the lack of city walls seem...
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