The Minoan civilization on Crete that flourished during the Aegean Bronze Age from around 2600 to 1400 BC, has been a subject of study and imagination for centuries. From the ancient Greeks who told tales of a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull to Sir Arthur Evans, who started to unravel the secrets behind the mythical Minoans around te turn of the twentieth century. With the unearthing of huge palaces, roads and temples in Knossos, and other parts of Crete in subsequent years, came the idea that the Minoans might have been the cradle of European civilization. Their socio-political structure that formed the basis for bureaucracy in the rest of Europe and the trade relations with mainland Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean
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How could it be that this civilization, that seemed to have ruled over one of the biggest islands in the Mediterranean, stayed shrouded in mystery for thousands of years? Evans suggested that there must have been a sudden development that gave rise to a civilization that was seemingly distinct from others in the area and concluded that a migration, most likely from North Africa, was the main factor behind this (1–24). Since then, other scholars have proposed that the origins of the Minoans could have been Cycladic, Balkan, Anatolian or Middle Eastern. This period, wherein the Minoan civilization had suddenly appeared, has been described by scholars as EM, or Early Minoan, and occured during the Neolithic period. In more recent studies the idea of a single point in time when a group of people migrated to Crete to form the Minoan civilization has been called into question. For example, the colonization of less accessible land on parts of Crete was always thought to have happened in EM, but recent studies suggests that this process was already happening before the existence of the Minoan civilization (Tomkins 38–40). It seems like changes in social structure were well underway on Crete before the arrival of a different civilization that would become known as the Minoans. This puts into question the notion that there …show more content…
But the notion that these buildings were the center of politics, economics and religion for a community (an idea that Evans created), requires a more nuanced view if we want to really understand how the Minoan societies interacted with the rest of the world and if they could have influenced the European civilizations. One assumption that has been criticized in recent years is the fact that these palaces acted as a central place from which traded goods were distributed to society, and that the economy relied on redistribution by a higher authority. Some scholars have argued that we can not assume that this is the case because it did not work like that in the temple economy of the Near East on which this system seems to be based (Postgate 459–480). Another argument against a centralized power comes in the form of a discovery of a set of buildings at Malia, owned by an affluent family rather than a king or priest, that served as the center of production and distribution in an area(Schoep 101-132). This suggests that the Minoan economy was not completely administered by a centralized authority like a king and that a lot of trading and distributing power was instead in the hands of the
How could it be that this civilization, that seemed to have ruled over one of the biggest islands in the Mediterranean, stayed shrouded in mystery for thousands of years? Evans suggested that there must have been a sudden development that gave rise to a civilization that was seemingly distinct from others in the area and concluded that a migration, most likely from North Africa, was the main factor behind this (1–24). Since then, other scholars have proposed that the origins of the Minoans could have been Cycladic, Balkan, Anatolian or Middle Eastern. This period, wherein the Minoan civilization had suddenly appeared, has been described by scholars as EM, or Early Minoan, and occured during the Neolithic period. In more recent studies the idea of a single point in time when a group of people migrated to Crete to form the Minoan civilization has been called into question. For example, the colonization of less accessible land on parts of Crete was always thought to have happened in EM, but recent studies suggests that this process was already happening before the existence of the Minoan civilization (Tomkins 38–40). It seems like changes in social structure were well underway on Crete before the arrival of a different civilization that would become known as the Minoans. This puts into question the notion that there …show more content…
But the notion that these buildings were the center of politics, economics and religion for a community (an idea that Evans created), requires a more nuanced view if we want to really understand how the Minoan societies interacted with the rest of the world and if they could have influenced the European civilizations. One assumption that has been criticized in recent years is the fact that these palaces acted as a central place from which traded goods were distributed to society, and that the economy relied on redistribution by a higher authority. Some scholars have argued that we can not assume that this is the case because it did not work like that in the temple economy of the Near East on which this system seems to be based (Postgate 459–480). Another argument against a centralized power comes in the form of a discovery of a set of buildings at Malia, owned by an affluent family rather than a king or priest, that served as the center of production and distribution in an area(Schoep 101-132). This suggests that the Minoan economy was not completely administered by a centralized authority like a king and that a lot of trading and distributing power was instead in the hands of the