Minoan Civilization: The First Mystery of Europe
Between approximately 2700 and 1450 BCE, on the island of Crete and the surrounding Aegean islands, a civilization flourished that remains, in many respects, genuinely mysterious: the Minoan civilization, named by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans after the legendary King Minos of Greek mythology. The Minoans built the first palace complexes in Europe — the great labyrinthine palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Akrotiri, and Mallia — and filled them with frescoes of extraordinary sophistication and unexpected joy: young men and women leaping over charging bulls, blue monkeys climbing through flowering meadows, dolphins swimming through imagined ocean light, processions of elegant figures bearing offerings. Their writing (Linear A) has never been deciphered. Their religion, centered on a goddess who holds serpents and is flanked by animals, has no certain interpretation. What we know is that they were the first civilized Europeans — a culture of trade, art, and apparent prosperity that a...