5.3 Europe: 3000 to 1500 b.c.  (Page 2/6)

Recent excavations near Arkhanes, south of Knossos, have revealed a temple for the dead, dating to 1,800 B.C. with a noble woman burial which included such things as a gold signet ring with a cult scene confirming that Minoans, like other peoples of that time, had the ancient belief in the dying and resurrected god. There is evidence of animal sacrifice and apparently in times of great stress, as in the earthquake period about to be described, they even used human sacrifices. (Ref. 18 , 136 , 129 , 215 , 109 , 186 , 211 , 213 , 188 )

About 1,700 B.C. violent earthquakes demolished the old palaces, but they were all rebuilt, for the most part on entirely new plans. During this rebuilding, Minoan civilization acquired its definitive character and the buildings developed their unique charm, elegance and grace. In the period of the new palaces, the population of Crete has been estimated at 256,000 with 50,000 under the direct rule of Knossos. The palaces had great store rooms and work shops and the earliest writing had to do with accounting for wheat, oil, barley, olives, figs, livestock, wine and honey. Horses are not documented on the island before the 15th century B.C. when the technique of using heat to bend wood for spoked wheels became available. The overall society was a stratified theocracy with the priest-king at Knossos supreme and lesser priest-kings in the other palaces. The latter, in turn, were surrounded by their nobles and their women and beneath them was the peasantry, still living essentially in a Stone Age economy. In contrast to most other ancient civilizations there were no slaves. Among the upper classes both sexes wore jewelry and participated in art, dancing, music and when young and supple, in the famous bull acrobatics. The meaning of the latter is still not clear.

A little north of Crete in the Aegean Sea is the peculiarly shaped island variously known as Thera or Sartorini. This is the remnant of a great volcano which had its first traceable eruption about 1,500 B.C. burying the island in ash and pumice. In 1967 Professor Marinatos discovered the tephra-preserved (covered with volcanic dust) town of Akrotiri on that island. In effect this Cretan extension was a Bronze Age "Pompeii" complete with terra cotta plumbing and town-house architecture. For fifty years or so after that first eruption Thera remained quiet, but we shall hear more of it in the next chapter. (Ref. 109 ) Additional Notes

Greece

If one accepts the theory that the Kurgans of south Russia migrated to Greece to become the Mycenaeans, the date of 2,300 B.C. is probably appropriate. Some believe there were two waves of these Kurgans, with the second wave coming just before 1,600 B.C. These were a hard-riding warrior class who dominated their earlier brothers to become a small, powerful, rich, ruling class. The original inhabitants of both mainland Greece and the adjacent Aegean islands were perhaps related to the Cretans in speech and race, but the development of civilization on the mainland had been arrested by massive invasions at the end of the 3rd millennium by barbarous peoples from Anatolia, and a century or so later by invaders from the north. The latter may have been the Kurgans, the first "Greeks", although some authorities believe that the Greek-speakers arrived much later. Like the Minoans, the Bronze Age Greeks