Nothing stirs the imagination like an honest-to-goodness
mystery. There’s just something enthralling about
The Unknown that ranges from the exciting to the abominably eldritch and incomprehensibly
terrifying. Now, our old pals the Classical Greeks were
no stranger to figuring stuff out, what with all their spiffy philosophy, but there were
some things that even they got a little stumped by: Where did our myths come from? Who came before us? Why does that island look like an impact crater? Should we be scared? Well, all these tempting plot-threads are
wrapped up in the murky history of a pre-Greek civilization called The Minoans. I should specify, not called that by themselves,
or even by the Greeks, because this society was so obscure that we only discovered it
in 1900. More than just a stepping stone on the road
to Greece making it big, the Minoans are a fascinating part of Bronze-Age history because
they’re so. darn. weird. SO, to trace the origins of civilization in
the Aegean Sea, Let’s do some History. It might not come as a surprise to hear that
Greece and Boats have a long history together, but it turns out that Seafaring in Greece
is even older than Civilization in Greece, as excavations from the Frankthi caves on
the mainland turned up obsidian ferried over from volcanoes on the islands as far back
as the Mesolithic Era. And those handy-dandy boats helped them make
an early transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age — as the process involved
combining copper, found in the island of Delos, with tin, found in the northeast Aegean coast
— a route that is unfortunately a little too damp for a walking tour. Between that sweet Boat Access enabling a
thriving fishing community and a local agriculture precision-optimized for grapes and olives,
the Kykladic Islands were looking pretty idyllic for early civilization. I mean, heck, bright sunny islands with seafood,
olive oil, and wine? Bronze Age suddenly not sounding too bad. The Aegean Sea will continue being a solid
10 for the next 5,000 years, but after a millennium of bronzemaking, the cultural center of gravity
shifted south, to the Island of Krete. We can see this quite clearly in the archaeological
record, as the Kretans had a distinct hobby of building massive palaces. Out of the half-dozen spread across the island,
the largest and most famous of these is Knossos, home of the legendary King Minos, hence the
name Minoan. It was first excavated in the 19-oughts by
Sir Arthur Evans, who stumbled onto some unusually-ancient looking pottery, got curious, bought up a
bunch of land, grabbed a shovel, and got to work. Within 5 years he and his team uncovered a
sprawling building complex made of smooth quarried stone, with such amenities as skylights,
running water, buried sewer lines, and gorgeous frescos. Clearly no slouch on the aesthetics, but most
impressive was the pure scale of the place. The large central courtyard was surrounded
by hundreds of rooms for all manner of different purposes, going beyond the typical administrative
offices and private residences to include religious spaces, extensive warehouses, artisan
workshops, and something approximating a marketplace. Those last three might seem a bit out of place
in a royal abode, no matter how ginormous, but they imply a unique structure to the Minoan
economy. If the palaces could stock a kingdom’s-worth
of supplies, ranging from local Kretan produce kept fresh in cold underground ceramics all
the way to overseas luxury items, it’s likely these compounds served as mass-redistribution
hubs: taking in everything and doling it back out as needed. Imagine a farmer bring in jars of olive oil
and exchanging it for fish, some wine, and a new cup made by an artisan in the palace. Call me old-fashioned but I kinda think they
nailed it on this one. It’s a system that would require immense
organization by the governing bureaucracy, but we have extensive tables of what look
like storage records, so when it works it works. Coordination on this monumental of a scale
was new to Europe, but looks as though it took inspiration from the palaces of ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia. And that’s not all they took from the near
east, as the Minoans were stocked with gold, ivory, lapis lazuli, and scarab designs, so
even for all the Minoan fanciness at home, they were still fundamentally a maritime culture. And the rest of the Aegean was very well aware
of this, as they would have come into frequent and perhaps unwilling contact with their neighbors
from Krete. Even without detailed written records, a broad
Minoan influence is evident in the mountains of their pottery and goldwork found on the
Greek mainland and all the way over to Anatolia. Much of that was spread through trade, but
in the Kyklades it was far more direct, like on the miraculously-well-preserved island
of Thera, which was home to either an indigenous culture that really dug the Minoan vibe or
an outright Minoan Colony. This seafaring supremacy approximates something
Athens would become famous for a thousand years down the line: Maritime Empire. Thucydides says as much when he cites king
Minos as the first to have built a great navy. And this makes one key detail of their palaces
make a lot more sense — they don’t have any walls. The mainland cities at the time had fortifications
so thick they were said to be built by giants, but Krete had a hundred-mile-moat and boats
for days, and that was all they needed! That also implies the Minoans weren’t a
threat to each other and probably worked as one big team. Now, although we can cobble together a decent
understanding of macro-scale Minoan civilization from context clues, the details just leave
us confused. Because there’s an incredible volume of
art in pottery, sculpture, and beautiful frescos — but ask three historians what on earth
it might mean and you’ll get five uncertain answers, with at least one historian crying. The prevalence of realistic-ish human figures
carrying libations and processing clearly has something to do with religion, but beyond
that... idunno??? There’s also a reverence for the natural
world, with particular emphasis on bulls, as stylized horns show up all over the roof
of the palace, and one fresco depicts a gymnast jumping over a charging bull. Because sure, parkour is cool and all, but
wake me up with the jungle-gym starts fighting back. That’s metal as hell, but it still doesn’t
tell us anything without other context. The Minoans did have written languages, but
since we don’t know how to read either of them, they’re stuck as a silent culture,
artfully expressing something that we can’t figure out. The prevalence of ornately-dressed women in
Kretan art might suggest a more egalitarian or even matriarchal social order than we’re
used to seeing in Classical Greece, as women take active roles in sacrifice and processions,
and are sometimes surrounded by male attendants. There’s obviously some reason for this,
but was it a religious thing, an outright political matriarchy, or blind chance leaving
behind more frescos of women than men? We have absolutely zero idea. Now, coincidentally, we’re not alone in
our confusion, because the Classical Greeks also had no clue what the Minoans were up
to. In fact, without modern archaeology, their
only indication that there was anything happening on Krete at all in the bronze age was from
the myth of King Minos and the Minotaur. Red’s given the full rundown before, but
the salient details are: a kingdom with lots of boats, a big old labyrinth, and a terrifying
bull-monster. This fits surprisingly well into the historical
reality of a maritime empire that built complex palaces and was obsessed with bulls, but the
later Greeks wouldn’t have known that, because Minoan civilization was long dead and buried
by the time Athens started loudly bragging about their hometown hero Theseus slaying
the Minotaur. So, if the Minoans were so big and tough,
why didn’t they stick around? The most dramatic theory attributes their
decline to the island of Thera, which used to be an oval until 1628 BC when a volcano
blew it to bits and sank into the sea, throwing a giant cloud of ash across the southeast
Aegean. This does explain why the Minoan site on the
island is preserved with positively Pompeiian precision, and it left an absolutely gorgeous
landscape for tourists to enjoy when they go visit Santorini — but it doesn’t explain
the Minoan collapse, as it’s two centuries ahead of schedule. Plato likely drew on the distant memory of
this explosion when he dreamed up the story of Atlantis, but it isn’t our culprit. So let’s go over what we do know about the
Minoan chronology and see what we can figure out. The first palaces appeared sometime in the
1900s BC, with sites at Knossos, Phaistos, Zakros, Malia, Galatas, and Kydonia. After an earthquake in about 1700, the palaces
were rebuilt (with some added structural support), and over the next two centuries we see Minoan
pottery make its way around the Aegean as outposts spring up from Thera to as far north
as Kea. Then, around 1450, there’s a break. Most of the palaces are destroyed, with Knossos
surviving for another century before it’s abandoned. Before 1450, records were kept in a language
we call Linear A, which, strictly speaking, is not Greek. It’s something else, but we don’t know
what, and that’s why it’s still undeciphered. Now, after 1450, the writing is in the same
script, but record a different spoken language. The script is called Linear B, the language
is an early form of Greek, and the other place we see this script appear is on the mainland,
as written by a people called the Mycenaeans. These guys are relative latecomers, but they’re
best known as the Achaeans of the Iliad who supposedly fought the Trojan War. So what are THEY doing on Krete? As it happened, they were in a lot of places,
as an artistic survey of pottery in the 1300s BC shows the geometric Mycenaean style appearing
all over the Minoans’ old stomping grounds. So one way or another, it would seem like
the Mycenaeans rolled up to Krete in the mid 1400s and either destroyed or deposed the
Minoans, only to leave a century later. Without the palaces there to keep society
running as it had been for the past several centuries, the entire civilization simply
fizzled out and went back to local fishing and subsistence farming. Now, the wildest part is that the Athenians
and the other classical Greeks actually knew about this, they just didn’t realize it. The thing with the story of Theseus and the
Minotaur is that it lets on more than it seems, because when we peer behind all the mythological
window-dressing, what we’re left with is the distant, imprecise memory of the Mycenaean
invasion of Krete. Not quite a bull monster, but tons of bovine
art. Not quite an underground labyrinth, but a
puzzlingly intricate palace complex. Not quite an annual tribute of 7 Athenian
sacrifices, but… well, here’s the thing. The Minoan outpost at Kea is within literal
line of sight from the Athenian Cape Sounion where King Aegeus threw himself into the sea,
and excavations on Krete turned up startling evidence of both human sacrifice and cannibalism. Mycenaean Athens may well have been a tributary
to the Minoan maritime empire, and that’s a fancy way to say a victim of constant piracy. If Athens has an ancient myth about sailing
to Krete and killing a big awful bull monster to liberate themselves from tyranny, that’s
not very far off of the actual invasion of Mycenaean Greeks in the mid 1400s. So far more than “local prince kills giant
monster, version 18-B” the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth is an account of an actual
historical event that’s been run through half-a-millennium of mythological telephone. And that, in my professional opinion, is sick
as hell. It's some big-time irony that a civilization
whose words nobody else can read is best known through a story that nobody thought was real. Modern archaeologists can ponder the Minoans
with the aid of incredible discoveries to try and understand what was going on in this
stunningly vibrant culture, but the Greeks that came after the Bronze Age, who had infinitely
less to go on, were just as captivated by them. The pure mystery of the palace without a voice
and the monster in the labyrinth is so damn compelling. It is impressive how many seemingly fundamental
aspects of Greek history trace back to the time before it was even Greek history. Aah, terrifying, I love it. Thank you so much for watching. Since I completed my Roman history series
I figured it was appropriate that we go back and properly work our way through the history
of Greece, starting at the very beginning. So there is plenty more where this came from. I hope you all enjoy a festive and plague-free
holiday season, and I’ll see you in the next video.
