Who were the Minoans? Europe's most bizarre civilization (Extended Version)

hello this is epimetheus and this is an extended version of the video i made about minoan history i've added in tons of interesting information not included in the original version of this video the last extended version of a video i made did quite well so i wanted to say thank you by making another extra long version i hope you will enjoy on the ancient mediterranean island of crete there lived a people fantastic fascinating fabulous frivolous fearsome decadent and determined they wear the minoans so the term minoan is a modern one coined by the british archaeologist sir arthur evans in the late 19th century evans was a gifted amateur archaeologist well amateur by today's standards pretty much any archaeologist in the 19th century would probably be considered amateur today evans was definitely more professional than archaeologists like heinrich leiman who used dynamite while excavating ancient cities evans purchased the site of the ancient palace of kenosis he excavated there at the sprawling palace which had over a thousand rooms and he identified it as the maze of the mythical king minos where he kept the monstrous minotaur a fearsome half-bull half-man according to legend the tyrannical minos demanded that the athenians send seven young men and seven maidens every seven years as a sacrifice to the minotaur eventually the minotaur was killed by the athenian hero theseus and minoan power over athens was broken this myth seems to be a vague memory of when crete had power over the mainland in the aegean consequently sir arthur evans thought it would be appropriate to call this civilization minoan after the legendary minos the minoans had a very ostentatious unique and detailed sense of fashion which made them a lot of fun to draw i based all of these drawings off a combination of their surviving artwork from their surviving painting they really favor the colors orange blue and yellow so i really try to make those colors prominent on the color palette for all of these guys and gals even though i did mix and match different patterns together these patterns are all from surviving minoan art they were the first true masters of the sea in human history well i suppose it would be more accurate to say they were the first true masters of the sea in human history that we know of and it depends on how you define the words master and see some could define this as the ability to navigate the atlantic ocean or the first people to regularly sell fishing boats along the coastline there also was a couple of comments in the initial video saying that the first example of the true masters of the sea would be the austronesian migration which was a many centuries-long process carried out by numerous austronesian people groups they were not a united centralized civilization but they spoke similar dialects and shared some similar cultural customs but as you would imagine as time went on the cultures and languages in the region became very different large-scale migration into what is now the philippines and southeast asia didn't begin until after 2500 bc the minoans had regular contact with the cyclades islands to their north around a thousand years before this but if you define master of the sea as regularly sailing on the open ocean then based on the current evidence it does appear that the austronesians were the first true masters of the sea or if you define it like me where's the first civilization to get into boats raid trade and collect tribute as well as having their whole society centered around maritime activities then it would be the minoans and they exploited their superior abilities to control those around them they have often been called the first european civilization here's another fun one for lovers of semantical salad how do you define first how do you define european and how do you find a civilization some consider some of the neolithic cultures on mainland europe as the first european civilization or others don't consider the minoans european enough for the cut of their jib whatever the case may be minoan civilization is far more impressive than any culture that came before it in what is now considered to be europe and their riding architecture and art is far more advanced than anything else found there to date so even though i did the disclaimer of they've often been called the first european civilization would i call them the first european civilization yeah their unique and elaborate society ended in a cycle of catastrophe foreign domination and destruction the island of crete is located in the eastern mediterranean at the nexus of ancient maritime trade routes linking europe western asia and north africa together from the bronze age to medieval times these trade routes didn't change that much the eastern mediterranean is pretty stormy so most pre-modern sailors like to stay reasonably close to a shoreline travel and trade directly between crete and egypt did occur in later times and given that there is evidence that the minoans trade a lot with the ancient egyptians it is likely that they directly sailed there as well the strategic position of the island and its ample natural resources set up crete for remarkable history minoan history can be divided into four periods the pre-palatial period the proto-palatial period the neo-palatial period and the post-palatial period so this is one of many dating chronologies for minoan history some have different names for the periods and wildly different dates several of these dates are tied to natural disasters where there was destruction on greet and the dates for those disasters are always being tweaked by academics some chronologies break minoan history down into as many as like 17 different phases i like this one but if i were to make my own i would tweak it a little bit i would have the proto-palatial period start 100 or 200 years earlier and i'd have the post-palatial period begin at 1450 bc because that's when the mycenaeans conquered crete so i filmed all of these ocean scenes on my phone at a beach my family used to go to when i was a kid once i got the idea stuck in my head of filming the tide pools and transposing the dates over them i pretty much had to go i felt like i spent most of my day stuck in traffic going to and from the coast but it was still worth it during the pre-palatial period the minoan civilization slowly emerged mastering farming and seafaring technologies the proto-palatial period saw the minoans develop international trade routes and a booming economy centered around massive palace administrative complexes the neo-palatial period was the height of minoan power and prosperity this gave way to a more turbulent age where invaders from the mainland dominated crete and the island's influence power and prosperity collapsed so it took me way too long to build that little tower of rocks it was pretty windy that day and either the stack of rocks was too flimsy and the wind would blow it over or it was too structurally sound and the waves couldn't knock it down so when this one was finally knocked over by a wave i was pretty happy long before minoan society developed in humanity's prehistoric past many of the early inhabitants of crete most likely arrived there by accident so emphasis on the most likely whenever this happened it would have been long before there was a ancient egypt or sumerian civilization so it is reasonable to assume that the people who first came to crete were using some of humanity's earliest and most primitive sailing vessels like the dugout canoe which is essentially just a hollowed-out log again that is what's most likely but again not for sure primitive fishing boats rafts and wreckage carried out to sea by the tide or by storms stumbled into crete the watercraft carried fishermen fugitives marooned adventures and migrants from around the mainland of the eastern mediterranean they decided to stay the island remained sparsely populated by hunter gatherers and coastal fishermen also i think it's important to emphasize that during this time of hunters and gatherers and fishermen been there for thousands of years there's a constant trickle of people from around the eastern mediterranean coming to the island and amalgamating with the local population and this very long and complex process produced a unique people in the original shorter version of this video there were many comments saying something along the lines of the minoans where from place xyz for example the minoans were from egypt the minoans where from what's now turkey or the levant or libya or mainland greece all of these are wrong but they're also all kind of right and some percentage of people from those places ended up in crete some of them a large percent some a small percent is so far back that it's incredibly difficult to say with any certainty this was the majority group at this time and whatever this is one of those subjects where there is some scholarly debate surrounding it i believe the latest dna studies have shown that the most prominent proportion of the dna from the founding groups were from the levant in anatolia with the majority being from anatolia which pretty much jives with what one would get from looking at the material record i'm usually super hesitant to mention dna in any of my videos for several reasons one the study of ancient dna is still in its infancy the results for the commercial find out your ancestry type dna tests are always jumping about depending on how many samples they're comparing it to and these results get more accurate over time the more samples they have to compare any one sample to and with ancient dna um often they're comparing very few samples to also very few samples so some preliminary results can drastically change when new ancient samples become available to compare it is a very interesting science that undoubtedly will become far more accurate in the years to come and it's a valuable tool to give you a general ballpark idea the second reason i've shied away from discussing dna in my videos previously is that it's somewhat complex i've read enough about ancient dna to know that i'm far from being an expert on the subject the internet is currently full of legions of people misinterpreting ancient dna data and i don't feel like joining that type of legion probably three out of four times i see the word haplogroup in a comment on a history video there's some blatant exaggeration or misinterpretation going on in the rest of the comment and you will often see different people using the exact same dna study to make opposite points anyways that's enough of a rambling diatribe about dna now back to minoan history until around 7000 bc when farming was introduced possibly by migrant anatolian farmers the population steadily increased again to quickly reiterate here here in the pre-palatial age when greek transitions from the neolithic period to the copper and bronze ages culture and people are being exchanged with the people around the aegean particularly the cycladic islands and these people are merging with the neolithic inhabitants of crete and again to what proportion this is occurring is a matter of debate and by the mid to later 4th millennium bc several other important technologies were adopted like the potter's wheel and metalworking which drastically increased productivity and efficiency so neolithic people spend an incredible amount of time making pottery and stone tools both of which tend to break the potter's wheel meant you could mass-produce pottery which freed up a lot of the labor force to specialize in other areas and once copper working was introduced in the mid-fourth of millennium bc that also freed up a lot of labor because metal tools could be repaired unlike stone tools which if broken could be made into a smaller tool but you lost a lot of material and time domesticated cattle sheep goats and pigs were also introduced cattle were especially valued as they were used to plow fields they also provided nutritious sources of protein like meat milk and cheese other animal byproducts like textiles and leather fueled early minoan industry and trade throughout minoan history textiles which is pretty much just a fancy word for any type of cloth or fabric was a mainstay of minoan trade over time the minoans specialize in more items for trade that were processed or manufactured as opposed to raw materials like textiles where sewing in an elaborate pattern to a fabric can increase the price the minoans imported gold and ivory and turned it into jewelry and exported it local clay was turned into desirable high quality pottery and olives were pressed into oil which was another high profit mainstay of minoan trade initially the proto-minoans leveled up their seafaring experience by sailing along the coast of their own island so this was pretty unclear the way i wrote this and had the caption up there saying pre-palatial when i said the proto-minoans i meant to convey the minoans before the pre-palatial period were the ones sailing around the island and leveling up their skill by even the early pre-palatial period they were already in pretty regular contact it seems with all the cyclities islands to their north but the process of leveling up their abilities and seafaring technology began before the pre-palatial but definitely continued throughout the pre-palatial of getting better ships and whatnot as it was easier to trade goods with other coastal settlements by boat than to trek through the mountainous terrain of the 150 mile long island and that probably stayed true till pretty modern times that before roads and automobiles and all that that um sailing was probably the easiest way to get around the island even in medieval or early modern times throughout minoan history the vast majority of the island's population was concentrated on the eastern half of the island as it had the best farmland and of the best farmland the most fertile region was and still is the masara plain today and in ancient times the region was a hub for olive and grape growing and the clay found in this plain was the source for much of the minoan's high quality pottery creed was self-sufficient it had plenty of food sources fresh water and timber to build boats all basic necessities needed for a great seafaring civilization but there was something missing on their island metal specifically copper and tin needed to make bronze metals were the crude oil of the ancient world needed to fuel a civilization's construction military and agricultural productivity after mastering the basics of seafaring and making improvements to their boats minoan merchants began trading with the cycladic islands to their north and then began exploring and trading with the other peoples of the aegean the minoans on crete and the inhabitants of the cyclades islands formed close cultural and economic ties that were to last for more than a thousand years uh close to 2000 years around the beginning of the second millennium bc the economy on crete was booming larger and larger homes were being built for an emerging ruling class of merchants priests and nobles so really the first palace period could begin anywhere around these dates and i guess it really depends on what size of a big house would you consider a palace these homes along with warehouses and workshops began to merge into larger palace complexes this was the first palace period on crete during which the minoans began to flex their muscle occupying the cyclades islands so i got a couple of comments asking if the minoans use the figure eight shield here and the answer is yes they did the figure eight shield is a very iconic design associated with the later myceneans but in fact the earliest depictions of it are from the minoans and i think all of the early depictions of it are from around 1600 bc i am sure this type of shield was invented before its earliest depiction but this guy may be holding this shield a little too early for his time period and establishing ever further trade routes the minoans began regular trade with the island of cyprus where they acquired large amounts of copper they also established regular trade with the emirate kingdoms in canaanite city states of the levant one of the most interesting items of minoan export was their very unique style of fresco painting which used two layers of lime plaster over a polished surface in combination with stucco examples of minoan style fresco have been found in the kingdom of yamad and in a palace in egypt in the egyptian example from the colors used to the bull leaping iconography everything seems very minoan so much so that some scholars believe these must have been made by native minoan artists it may even be evidence of a possible dynastic marriage as a minoan would take comfort from their native style of art displayed in the palace other scholars disagree with this and think that the artist may not have even been minoan an alternative hypothesis is that the frescoes are evidence of the interconnected world of the time one possible scenario is that painters from the levant and egypt worked on crete and returned to their home countries with new skills these may have been apprentices of some of the minoan master painters as some sort of cultural exchange between the royal courts or the minoans contracted these foreign painters because they needed a really massive labor force of painters to paint their massive palaces one scenario i think is very likely is that foreign merchants and diplomats visited the palace at kenosis and other palaces on greet they saw the frescoes adoring the palaces and were extremely impressed seeking a curry favor with their king back home they hired a couple minoan painters probably paying them or their masters an exorbitant fee brought them back and put them in charge of a full team of painters and taught them the minoan style of fresco whichever scenario is the actual real scenario that happened it is really fascinating to look at such an interesting cultural exchange in the second millennium bc the kingdom of egypt became the minoan's most lucrative trading partner there they acquired vast amounts of gold which could be traded at much higher prices elsewhere in the mediterranean the minoans also became skilled metal workers and could trade finished gold items at an even higher price for a greater profit margin the vast amount of resources the minoans accumulated necessitated that they develop a written script to help keep track of it all who owned what record contracts and possibly record important events first the minoans developed a unique hieroglyphic script possibly inspired by their contact with the ancient egyptians this was gradually replaced by a more functional looking script creatively called by historians linear a unfortunately neither of these scripts have ever been deciphered well at least for now so in the comments of the shorter version of this video there were several people saying that it's already been deciphered this is pretty much not true there are several scholars and researchers that believe that they have deciphered some words in linear a but even that is a topic of hot debate at the point at this point in time maybe when you watch this video in the future that won't be the case but currently from everything i've read it's not the case that anybody in the world could pretty much pick up a linear a tablet and read it at best it's a handful of words or maybe a phrase or two that someone has deciphered some of the scholars and researchers who believe that they have deciphered some of the language um also believe that it's related to a levantine language or others believe that it's very closely related to the mycenean greek linear b i also saw some people posting an article which claimed linear a had been deciphered i don't know if they were doing it as a joke or that they didn't notice that the article was published on april 1st and the source at the bottom of the article was something like the center for greek and hellenic linguistic studies or something but the link is to the link on the wikipedia article on april first day pranks so if people were posting that as a joke very funny and if you thought it was uh real then um i know read a little closer next time but anyways it will be glorious when we finally can read linear a i am almost 100 sure that there's probably a rosetta stone type object for minoan and egyptian languages given the large amount of contact and trade between the two civilizations but let's just hope they weren't all destroyed and there's one buried under the ground somewhere on cretar in egypt or maybe somewhere else in the near east maybe one day one of you will decipher it and we can learn much more details about minoan economy history politics and religion in the late 18th century bc a massive series of earthquakes appears to have rocked the island destroying at least four of the island's most important palace complexes and much of the surrounding cities and towns this destruction and death might have been enough to cause the downfall of a lesser robust civilization i think this is primarily due to the minoan naval superiority and pretty much dominance of the whole gnc at this time and they probably tried to keep the whole event a secret from their enemies and trading partners with the ocean and their navy protecting them they were in a much better position than let's say a mesopotamian civilization where something similar could have happened in mesopotamia anatolia there was always all these mountain tribes and petty kingdoms on the periphery of the larger empires ready to take advantage of a bad situation but in fact it seems to have had the opposite effect and strengthened the minoan's resolve all the palace complexes and destroyed buildings were quickly rebuilt on a colossal scale the largest palace at kenosis covered six acres and had more than one thousand rooms approximately thirteen hundred some areas of the luxurious palace were up to five stories tall and the complex boasted a theater so the theater at kenosis held about 400 people in contrast to greek and roman theaters the religious ceremonies athletic games and dances that took place there were only meant for the highest nobility to watch there was also a large central courtyard which is probably where the famous bully bean ceremonies took place many large warehouses and workshops so the warehouses would have held the reserve supply of olive oil and grains and dried foods like fish meats beans and olives the palace is also where much of the olive oil and wine would have been made as well as the more expensive fabrics and jewelry it also had an advanced system of indoor plumbing so the palace had three separate water management systems one of them was for the palace's water supply one of them was for drainage runoff during the rainy season and the third was for waste water the water was brought from about 6 miles or 10 kilometers away and the water system was made out of terracotta pipes which were tapered on one end to make it pressure fitting with the next piece there were toilets in the pallets which were flushed by pouring a jug of water into the toilet after you use the latrine which took the waste into the palace's sewer system the main aqueduct also branched off and supplied water to the nearby town or city the town around kenosis grew into a massive city with a population that may have been as high as 100 000 people based on the archaeological record it is the generally accepted scholarly consensus that throughout the neo-palatial period canosis was the dominant if not absolute power center on crete with other palace centers towns and rural villas all owing allegiance to canasis it is a subject of scholarly debate if canaasis dominated the other palace centers before the neo-palatial period in fact there is very little known about the minoan form of government from any time period and how the relations were between the different palace complexes one piece of evidence that indicates that the minoans were internally united is that there is currently no evidence for war between the different minoan centers one theory i think is possible that falls in line with the minoans being pragmatic merchant negotiators is that at some early point in their history they figured out that war was not good for business if any significant amount of men were left behind to defend the home front those were men who could not be used as fishermen sailors and merchants and even soldiers in somebody else's land instead of their own also perhaps it is possible that the later mycenaean greek practice of having two warriors duel before a battle to spare the lives of the soldiers involved came from the minoans which would make sense for that they generally seem peaceful and if only you had pairs of soldiers fighting they wouldn't be destroying cities and workshops and destroying the economy along with it so as a disclaimer i did not read the theory of the minoans dueling to prevent warfare on their island anywhere that is just something i also thought would be a possibility that could fit the historical record or maybe even the bull leaping ceremony was some way to uh discourage conflict or to settle conflict if you have a different theory on why the different minoan palace complexes didn't really seem to have engaged in a war with each other let me know down in the comments there was the old theory that was more popular like 50-plus years ago that the minoans wear a completely hippy feminine just lovey-dovey society that didn't like war but that's been pretty much proven false because they have uncovered weapons and depictions of warfare from the surviving art at their palaces it is clear that they preferred scenes of peace to scenes of war while at home but that does not prove that they weren't warlike and may only indicate that their island they viewed as a place of peace and rest in the midst of a mediterranean world where warfare was frequent and catastrophic for those involved from much later classical greek legend folklore and histories it is asserted that a king named minos ruled from kenosis he established an empire in the aegean founded colonies and stamped out piracy in regard to the minoans the greek historian herodotus used the term thalisocracy to describe this type of seafaring empire in recent times it has been hypothesized that minos was a minoan word for king or perhaps a title like caesar where later kings took the name of an early great king another example is the parthians who use our sasses the name of their first great king as a title and it can make things very confusing when a later king would sign his inscription or coin only with the name arsases so it could be a similar situation where the minoan king had the title of minos and later greeks confused that commonly used title as the name of a particular king other scholars have hypothesized that the minoans did not even have a king as in many of my other videos when i noticed there's a divide between scholarly opinion i try to present the major views on the subject and leave it up to the viewer to decide what makes more sense but instead we're ruled over by priestess queens at kenosis there is a throne room however in the significant amount of minoan art found throughout crete there is no clear example of a kingly figure depicted in contrast there are numerous examples of prominent females depicted that have been interpreted as goddesses priestesses or perhaps even queens so these two minoan ladies i drew are partially based off of inspired by these little statuettes this one gots the double snakes this one got the devil axes and this one has the triple decker snake crown which i think looks very reminiscent of mesopotamian style crowns whatever the case may be from surviving art it appears women did play a dominant role in religion and palace life in contrast to other near eastern cultures where men are depicted far more often than women in minoan art it is the opposite women are more common and dress far more elaborately than the fellas men are usually shown performing outdoor manual labor or as soldier sailors this probably led to the artistic convention of portraying men as heavily tanned and most women as pale white as it was probably a status symbol to have noble women spending away their hours indoors here's another striking example i found in a book of men and women portrayed with very different complexions the vitamin d deficient look became so desirable that applying toxic white lead makeup became a thing this same artistic convention is also seen in early roman fresco but palatial life was not all toxic beauty and ostentatious dresses while the men were away the women played politics and managed the economy this evolves naturally in societies where males are indisposed for long periods of time like in the much later spartan society where the warrior elite lived in all male communes training for war and growing it out while their wives engaged in business and managed the economy on crete many merchant and warrior sailors were gone from the island at any given time and many also drowned at sea so the island would have had a disproportionate amount of women the returning merchant sailors evidently adorned their wives with every manner of luxury and every lavish fabric from far off lands some early scholars assumed the minoans were a peaceful unwar-like people because their cities had no walls and the near absence of warfare in their arch the relatively small number of their weapons that had been unearthed on the first point their cities towns and palaces did not need walls they had wooden walls their navy patrolled the aegean and they were confident in their superior nautical abilities and intimate knowledge of the waters surrounding crete their merchants and spies likely knew of any major potential threat before their enemies had even finished building their fleet the minoans rarely portrayed military in their art probably because they rarely engaged in conflict again that is speculation at minimum they didn't engage in conflict very often but it is also quite possible that they quite often engage it in conflict my guess is minoan style conflict may have been somewhat similar to um conflict fought by the other nautical empires like the british portuguese dutch and spanish where they would hit their enemies hard and without warning and use try to use that strategically place violence to negotiate better trade deals or tribute or something along those lines it may be like the dutch empire profit instead of territorial expansion was the main goal of the minoans the threat of bringing overwhelming force to any point in the aegean was probably enough to cause a troublesome city to offer tribute realizing that any resistance would be futile the mycenaeans of mainland greece emerged in the 18th century bc as a vassal or tributary of the minoans like the minoans the myceneans are another one where we don't really know what they call themselves their name is a derivation from mycenae or my kenai in greek or also pronounced maikeny in the much later greek epic the iliad these people are called archives danons or akians the only contemporary references that are widely believed to refer to them are from the hittites and they call the mycenaeans ahiawa or ahiya which may be linguistically related to the homeric aquians for over a century the minoans were at the height of their power no nearby kingdom or people posed any real threat none of the contemporary empires of the minoans had a formidable navy especially when compared to the minoans so they probably felt pretty safe then the important minoan trading center and colony of thera exploded it was one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in human history the force of the eruption triggered massive tsunamis that devastated the northern coastline of crete it is probable that the immense tidal wave sank much of the minoan fleet the determined minoans had experienced devastating natural disasters before but none like this so to read this caption and comment on a little bit more the date of the eruption 16th ish century bc and the extent of the damage to the palaces following the thera eruption is a matter of intense scholarly debate so to address the 16th ish century bc for the date of the explosion is traditionally the date was put around 1 500 bc when they're erupted as more and more tests have been done on the island of santorini in the surrounding area the date just keeps getting pushed back from the last couple decades tests have estimated that the eruption happened somewhere in the mid 1500s to later 1500s bc into the 16 early 1600s to mid 1600s and now it's back down around 1600 i'm sure whatever is the most recent estimate is going to get revised up or down and is going to be obsolete pretty soon amidst all this confusion the only thing that seems certain is that the old theory that the thera eruption was the immediate cause of the minoan civilization's collapse is false instead it does seem that the thera eruption was the cause for the minoan decline however before it was thought that their eruption happened and then a couple decades later the mycenaean greeks conquered the island around 1450 bc but now it looks like the gap is 90 or 100 years on the low end or maybe as high as 150 or 200 years on the high end but it also seems clear that after the thera eruption they can no longer dominate the aegean how they used to despite the massive setbacks they began to slowly rebuild it was during this time that the mycenean states of the mainland began to build up their own fleets which they used to take the minoan islands one by one it might have been a fair fight leading to a long drawn-out war between the two civilizations but then disaster struck again earthquakes rocked crete many died and the partially rebuilt ruins became ruins again the depopulated minoans began to rebuild again but were undoubtedly demoralized even if it was 100 or 150 years before i'm sure they were still talking about that time their island of thera blew up and on top of that they got massive tidal waves and a bunch of earthquakes people stopped paying tribute and the mainlanders were taking over their islands so i think their morale would have been pretty low their faith in their gods probably diminished and priestesses waving around snakes or axes in the air was probably not as comforting as it once was sometime around 1450 bc the mainland mycenaeans arrived and conquered the island a new mycenaean ruling class set up shop at kenosis where they built a new palace throughout the remainder of the post-palatial period minoan culture was gradually replaced by mycenaean minoan lineure was replaced by mycenaean linear b which used the same symbols to represent different sounds also the matter of debate is to what extent the mycenians replaced the existing population or if they were merely just a new ruling class the myceneans would have been somewhat similar to the minoans in culture and ancestry which makes it somewhat difficult to tell what happened after the mycenaean invasion and why the post-palatial period is generally considered part of minoan history and it doesn't just end at 1450 or 1500 a level of prosperity did return to the island but it was a pale shadow of its former monopolistic opulence i think the most likely thing to have happened here is that the mycenaeans who conquered crete broke off their allegiances to the mainland and independently ruled they were in no way as powerful as early minoans but probably still taxed some of the trade going back and forth between cyprus with uh copper the mycenaean states were on the periphery of the interconnected system of great empires of the later bronze age in contrast to the relatively united empires of the east the myceneans were a very loose confederation of states centered around fortified palace complexes in contrast to the minoans early on in mycenaean civilization their palace complexes were fortified if the later greeks fuzzy memories through the homeric epics and later historians are to be believed the mycenean greeks or achaeans were just as coral sim as the later classical greeks it is likely that their squabbling and rivalries made them vulnerable when in the late 13th century bc nobody expects to see people the sea peoples were a sortie of saucy saline scallywags and one of several contributing factors to the bronze age collapse which to briefly sum up was a very dark dark age where people were illiterate and very mean pirates and internal rebellion overwhelmed the myceneans as early as 1278 a paradical people known as the sheridan had raided egypt and terrorized the eastern mediterranean it is very likely these were the same marauders who were tormenting the mycenians and the numerous aegean islands would have been the ideal paradical base for such ill-intended people concrete ah just noticed an error here in the animation the last time i showed crete was correct with the mycenaeans only rebuilding kenosis here i incorrectly show all of them being rebuilt at the time around 1200 bc the palaces and towns were destroyed again in contrast to the destruction layers caused by earthquakes this destruction was caused by fire and the perpetrators unknown some of the likely candidates include the sheridan probably accompanied by some of their known associates at the time like the shekels show the luca the shekalesh were likely from sicily and the luca were from southern anatolia for sure and are well attested to both in hittite and egyptian records another popular theory is that throughout mycenaean greece the common people rose up and overthrew the ruling class this is based off the fact that some of the mycenaean citadels and palaces were destroyed while the towns and cities surrounding them were unharmed like eterns to my knowledge there's no evidence for something like this happening at the palace at kenosis however i believe the common people on crete would have had just as much or more motivation than their counterparts on the mainland to rebel against the mycenaean nobility who had turned the trajectory of the island's prosperity upside down some survivors built remote fortified hilltop settlements which are evidence of the turbulent times it also appears that many throughout the aegean in coastal anatolia joined the marauders some of these like the luca were begrudging hittite vassals and in the ultimate wave of sea people the majority appear to be of aegean origin based on their arms and style of dress they moved east along the coast leaving a swath of destruction in their wake their rampage culminated with a failed invasion of egypt there were two major assaults on the nile delta that took place 30 years apart these motley bans of miscellaneous malcontented mediterranean marauders with mayhem on their minds were composed of different people groups from around the central and eastern mediterranean in the first wave the chardana also known as the sheridan appear to be the most numerous in the final assault the pelosette appear to have been the most numerous because they are the most often depicted as well as they are the most often mentioned in egyptian accounts some of the captured people of the sea called the palacet were resettled in southern canaan their descendants became known as the philistines scholars generally agree that the peloset were of aegean origin the clothing arms and armor of the pelasette are extremely close to those worn by the myceneans the style of the homes they built are similar to aegean homes and they also brought a g and breed a pig to the region and the most popular theory is that they were descended from the amalgamated minoans and mycenaeans of crete so the family tree of the philistines would look something like this the myceneans and the minoans created the pelle set and the peloset and the canaanites admixture created the philistines which if you would like to know more about the philistines check out the video i made about them as the whole greater near east fell into a dark age creech became a sparsely populated backwater and memory of its once glorious past faded into myth and legend and much of it was forgotten three thousand years after minoan civilization collapsed they were rediscovered the first archaeologist to undertake excavations at kenosis was named minos how cool is that veracu i didn't notice this when i was filming this at the beach but uh i think this is a seal or perhaps a piece of seaweed floating in the ocean while making the original shorter version of this video i got pretty ill and it took me longer than i would like to recover which is the main reason the last video took so long to come out despite not putting out any new videos for over three months interest in my old videos still remained high which allowed me to pay all my bills and not worry too much i am profoundly grateful for all of your interest in history which keeps allowing me to be able to do this my channel has just recently reached 500 000 subscribers which i never imagined anything like this happening when i was first uploading videos for fun i have worked outdoors in retail stores and in cubicles but nothing i've done before beats studying history drawing and sharing it with you guys and now for something completely different something i did not expect to stumble upon in the big city hello there's epimetheus in my backyard and there's this little towel right here and i got him a piece of meat but he seems more interested in the blue jays and hummingbirds that are buzzing about right now that are quite perturbed about his presence lastly i'd like to thank my tremendous patrons over on patreon who have supported me through thick and thin thank you so much guys and gals i'm super excited and looking forward to 2022 where i want to thank you all by producing better content than ever before

Channel: Epimetheus

Views: 306,825

Keywords: Minoans, Minoan Civilization, ancient history, minoan civilization documentary, minoan documentary, mycenaean, Minoan fashion, minoan history, minoan art, crete, history, history documentary, bronze age, bronze age collapse, egypt, ancient Egypt, Egypt Minoans, knossos, minoan eruption, thera, thera eruption, Atlantis, linear A, minoan language, minoan culture, philistines, minoan history explained, Who were the Minoans?, minoan collapse, documentary, minos, history of the Minoans

Id: t6cHnbYWk0E

Length: 42min 43sec (2563 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021