Minoan Crete
-The Minoans of Crete were an early source of inspiration for what would come to be known as Ancient Greek civilization.
-Crete- the largest Greek island; separates the Libyan Sea from the Aegean Sea.
-Mountainous, but also has fertile plains for agriculture.
-Just like other Neolithic Greeks, the people established farms and shit around the same time as the people of the mainland.
-Same with a social and political hierarchy, specialization of labor, etc.
-Finally developed a proto-civilization around 3500 BC.
-Eventually became an island of small city-states.
-Minoans entered into the Bronze Age around 2700 BC.
-Traded in wine, olive oil, wool, lumber, etc.
-Early masters of the Aegean Sea, as they were really good at building ships that could go out in into the open sea.
-At the height of their power they had a trade network set up with mainland Greece, the Cyclades, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, and even as far away as the Iberian peninsula!
-Crete may have been referred to as "Keftu" or "Kaftor" by the Egyptians, which are names also mentioned in both the Old Testament and Hittite records, although it's possible that these names are referring to people from Cyprus, Rhodes, or southern Anatolia.
-However, paintings of these "Keftu" at that time make them look like what we would consider to be Minoans, so who knows? There's other evidence to suggest they were Minoans too...
-Minoans also founded colonies in the Cyclades, Cythera (off the coast of SE Peloponnese), Rhodes, etc.
-Essentially "Middle Minoan" and "Middle Cyclades" are the same period because due to Crete's heavy cultural influence on the Cyclades during this time.
-Although Minoan chronology is divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods (based on pottery designs), another archaeologist proposed a new form of chronology based on its architecture- pre-palatial, proto-palatial, neo-palatial, and post-palatial periods.
-2000-1700 BC- proto-palatial period.
-The first palace in Crete was built at Knossos (outside of modern-day Haraklion, Crete), which is also arguably the oldest city in Europe!
-Other palaces were built at Phaistos (near Knossos), Malia (roughly 30 km east of Knossos), Zakros (east coast of Crete), and maybe some others.
-It is unknown as to if these city-states were ever consolidated into a unified functioning political unit, or if they were just a loose federation of self-ruling states.
-The closest source we have for the Minoans in terms of an actual historian explaining who the fuck these people were is through Thucydides, and even he wasn't around until the 5th century BC! That's like roughly 1000 years after the collapse of the Minoan civilization!
-Thucydides talks about the Minoans while providing some background info on the Peloponnesian War.
-Thucydides talks about a king named Minos (where the name "Minoans" comes from) who was the first ruler of Crete and who operated a maritime empire and was the first person in Greece to organize a legitimate navy. He also was the one who led the Minoans to dominate the Cyclades and stamp out piracy and shit.
-Of course, historians disagree on if the Minoans actually dominated other people or if it was just their culture and trade that caused others to culturally assimilate to them.
-It's also entirely possible that Thucydides was using the legend of King Minos (or maybe he just straight up made the dude up?) to try and illustrate a precedence for the need for the Athenians to crack down on piracy, but of course who the fuck knows for sure.
-Myths of Ancient Crete
-King Minos
-King Minos was the son of Zeus (who was in the form of a bull at the time of Minos' conception) and Europa (a human). Zeus had stolen Europa on his back and had fled with her from Tyre (a Phoenician city in modern-day southern Lebanon) to Crete (which is where we get the name "Europe" from!). At Crete he banged Europa and she eventually gave birth to three sons- Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Then Europa married King Asterion (the current ruler of Crete at that time). When King Asterion died he named Minos as heir (Asterion had died with no biological sons of his own). I guess Minos didn't like his brothers or didn't want them fucking up his grasp on power, so he had them exiled. As king, Minos prayed to gods to send him a sign that would show to him that they approved of his succession, and it worked- Poseidon sent him a beautiful, divine white bull that he was to sacrifice in their honor, but King Minos stupidly decided to switch out the white bull with a regular one, which of course didn't fool anyone and just pissed off the gods, so they punished King Minos by having his wife, Queen Pasiphae, suddenly develop a bizarre bull fetish, and she ended up banging the divine white bull; eventually, she gave birth to a half-man, half-bull monster (who would come to be known as "the Minotaur"). Horrified, King Minos decided to hire Daedalus (it was Daedalus who made it possible for Pasiphae to have sex with the bull, as she had convinced him to design a wooden cow for her to have sex with (so I guess it would make it easier for her to have sex with a real one? idk)), a genius Athenian engineer, to design an elaborate underground labyrinth underneath the palace at Knossos; it was here where the Minotaur would be imprisoned). In order to make sure that the solution to the labyrinth was never discovered, King Minos then decided to have Daedalus and his son Icarus (why also him?) imprisoned in a tower. Of course, Daedalus had already figured out a way to escape- they would fly out of the tower with artificial wings that Daedalus would make out of feather, string, and wax (somehow). However, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too high because that would make the wax melt (too close to the sun), nor should he fly too low (because then water from the sea could get into the feathers of the wings and fuck them up). Unfortunately, Icarus ended up flying too high, so the wax of his wings melted and he plunged into the ocean and drowned. Luckily, although Icarus didn't survive the trip, Daedalus was able to successfully escape to Sicily, where he was taken in by King Cocalus of the city of Kamikos (unclear as to if this king or city ever actually existed). After this, one of King Minos' sons, Androgeos, was killed in Athens, so King Minos declared war on Athens, and won! As a result, King Aegias had to send seven young boys and seven young girls every nine years to King Minos, whereupon he would feed them to the Minotaur! Finally, King Aegias' son, Theseus, volunteered to go to the Labyrinth to try and kill the Minotaur (and also get out alive, of course). King Aegias said that this was fine, but only if Theseus remembered to change the sails from black to white when he returned home by ship to Athens so that his dad would know that he had been successful in his quest. Anyway, when Theseus arrived at Knossos, King Minos' daughter, Princess Ariadne, was immediately smitten with Theseus and desperately wanted him to survive the Labyrinth, so she gave him a ball of thread so that he could find his way back to the beginning of the Labyrinth by tying it to the entrance. Of course, Theseus was ultimately successful in slaying the Minotaur, and then he left the Labyrinth and sailed back home with Ariadne. However, unfortunately for her she didn't make it back to Athens, as Theseus ended up abandoning her on the island of Naxos (in the Cyclades); eventually, she married the god Dionysus! Anyway, as Theseus was returning to Athens he forgot to change the sails from black to white, so when the king went to the cliffs overlooking the sea and saw the ships with black sails, he assumed the worst and jumped off because he couldn't stand living with the grief. Doh! So, this is where we get the name for the Aegean Sea- from King Aegias! Moving on, King Minos ends up getting killed in Kamikos by Daedalus (not too sure what Minos was doing there).
-It's entirely possible that there's actually some truth to the legend of King Minos.
-One theory is that "Minos" in Minoan meant "king" (similar to "Caesar" essentially meaning "emperor" in Latin).
-Another theory is that "King Minos" is just the Minoan version of other legendary founders of ancient kingdoms due to a similarity in the names (Menes of Egypt's First Dynasty, Mannus of the Germanic tribes, Manu of Dravidia (in modern-day southern India), Manes of Maeonia/Lydia (in modern-day Turkey), Mizraim of the Egyptians (according to the Israelites), etc.
-According to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (c. 1st century BC) and the Greek-Roman historian plutarch (1st-2nd century AD), there were TWO kings named Minos who had ruled over Crete at some point.
-The first one was the son of Zeus and was a good ruler; he eventually became one of the three judges of the dead in Hades.
-The second one was a shitty king who turned the Minoans into a evil maritime empire.
-Anyway, it's unclear as to the exact details of what was going on in Crete during this time, but it was obvious that they were quite powerful compared to neighboring peoples.
-They developed the world's first system of indoor plumbing FFS! Also had heated floors, clay pipes for obtaining clean water, flush toilets, and hot and cold water for baths.
-This shit wouldn't be seen again (at this level) until the Romans (at least in terms of Western civilization).
-Minoans also had a system of writing- originally used pictographs called Cretan hieroglyphs.
-However, by 1800 BC they had a developed a linear script which used symbols that represented syllables and joined together to form the sounds of words.
-Called "Linear A" by scholars (as opposed to "Linear B", which would be developed later), it was used in parallel with Cretan hieroglyphs.
-Linear A was typically used for records, lists, etc.
-Minoan royalty and nobles seem to have lived in extreme luxury compared with how the common folk lived.
-Scholars believe that the king also acted as a judge and was seen as having divine connections as well- either divine heritage, powers, or communication abilities, and represented the people to the gods.
-This would make sense, as in the near east during this time the rulers of cities were often priest-kings. However, Crete seems to not have had massive temples or anything like that, and most likely the palaces acted as temples for religious stuff. There were, however, shrines belonging to tree cults, apparently.
-We aren't too sure about the details regarding Minoan religion during this time other than that they seemed to have worshiped the forces of nature and were polytheists, worshiping primarily female deities (including a fertility/mother goddess, among others).
-They were also really into imagery involving bulls, and had lots of bull sacrifices and shit.
-Had a bunch of art, most of which had a heavy Egyptian influence, but they didn't seem to bother too much with portraying the rulers as powerful conquerors or whatever; instead, they usually just created art depicting animals, nature, and stuff like that.
-For sports, they seemed to have been really into "bull-leaping" (catching the horns of a charging bull and then somersaulting along its back), which may have also been done for religious purposes (it's unclear).
-Perhaps were a matriarchal society.
-Because they were so important for trade and were isolated on the island of Crete, they didn't have to worry too much about defense or the threat of invasion.
-This is backed up by the fact that (as far as we can tell) they didn't have any walls or fortresses, and their art never seemed to have any violence in it (the weapons featured in some of the artworks seems to have been for ceremonial purposes).
-However, it's likely that they had to deal with piracy in terms of their trade ships getting raided at sea, so it's probably not like the Minoans were just these pacifist merchant-hippies just chilling in Crete.
-So, if everything was going so well for the Minoans, then what went wrong?
-c. 1700 BC- a huge earthquake destroyed many of the Minoan palaces, including the on at Knossos. However, they were luckily able to rebuild their structures and reorganize, and this actually kicked off the Minoan's golden age of art and culture in the Mediterranean.
-During this time the Minoans also made great innovations in bronze technology, including figuring out how to make bronze knives stronger (so that they wouldn't bend) and longer, allowing for the creation of bronze swords.
-These bronze sword designs eventually began appearing elsewhere in the Near East and the Aegean Sea regions, and Minoan bronzesmiths were considered to be the best in the business.
-c. 1650-1625 BC- huge volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini (AKA Thira), South Aegean) in the Cyclades, 90 miles north of Crete.
-Was such a massive eruption that it seems to have played a significant role in some stories in Greek mythology, as well as perhaps the origin of the legend of Atlantis!
-It's entirely possible that its effects were felt as far away as China (during the fall of the semi-mythical Xia dynasty)!
-Unfortunately, we don't have any records of this event from the Egyptians during this time because I guess it Egypt was going through some shit during this time (they were being invaded by the Hyksos), although there were records noting heavy rainfalls or something.
-Most scholars agree that this eruption was a catalyst for the collapse of the Minoan civilization.
-The old theory was that the ash from the eruption killed off a bunch of plant-like vegetation on Crete and caused massive starvation. This seems to have been debunked, however.
-The latest theory is that the eruption caused tsunamis (with waves of perhaps up to 65 feet high!) which destroyed many of the port cities and towns on Crete's northern coast (not to mention a ton of Minoan ships!). This crippled the Minoan civilization, which had thrived on trade. Additionally, the ash from the volcano blotted out the sun, which fucked up the weather and the farming system, and the archaeological evidence indicates that there was a significant drop in the quality of life for the Minoans.
-Because of the power vacuum in the region caused by the eruption, by the time the Minoans finally got their shit back together it was too late- the Mycenaean civilization of mainland Greece were the new dominant power in the region. Unfortunately for the Minoans, their 15 minutes of fame had passed.
-The Mycenaeans at this time were mainly concerned with expanding their influence and culture through naval warfare, so they began to engage in heavy fighting with the Egyptians and Hittites but didn't seem to have too much trouble conquering the Minoans :(
-It was easy to invade Crete because they had always been pretty unprepared for any kind of serious invasion.
-Thus, c. 1450-1425 BC, the Minoans were conquered by the Mycenaeans. Crete's palaces were burned (except for the main palace at Knossos), as well as other estates and even entire villages!
-Anyway, although the Mycenaeans had conquered the Minoans, they were clearly heavily influenced by them before and afterwards, so it appears as if they absorbed the Minoan culture rather than erasing it completely.
-They also used a new system of writing ("Linear B") which we eventually figured out (in the 1950s) that it was not only a mix of Linear A with the Mycenaean language, but also a precursor to Modern Greek!
-It was most likely the case that the Mycenaeans were relatively barbaric compared to the Minoans, so once the Mycenaeans conquered Crete they began to absorb Minoan culture (including palace-based economics and shit) in a way that made it back to the mainland, and the Mycenaean overlords of Crete began to rule in a way that resulted in an eventual combined "Minoan-Mycenaean" culture.
-The Minoan-Mycenaean culture was also influenced by other cultures of the Near East, as well as Egypt.
-Unfortunately, c. 1375-1350 BC Crete was invaded and fucked up again, most likely by other mainland Mycenaeans who were rivals of the Mycenaeans who were ruling Crete at that time.
-Crete's power and influence was again crippled, and although it was fine after this it would never become powerful again, as other Greek cities and cultures would continue to dominate the region over time.
-Crete- the largest Greek island; separates the Libyan Sea from the Aegean Sea.
-Mountainous, but also has fertile plains for agriculture.
-Just like other Neolithic Greeks, the people established farms and shit around the same time as the people of the mainland.
-Same with a social and political hierarchy, specialization of labor, etc.
-Finally developed a proto-civilization around 3500 BC.
-Eventually became an island of small city-states.
-Minoans entered into the Bronze Age around 2700 BC.
-Traded in wine, olive oil, wool, lumber, etc.
-Early masters of the Aegean Sea, as they were really good at building ships that could go out in into the open sea.
-At the height of their power they had a trade network set up with mainland Greece, the Cyclades, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, and even as far away as the Iberian peninsula!
-Crete may have been referred to as "Keftu" or "Kaftor" by the Egyptians, which are names also mentioned in both the Old Testament and Hittite records, although it's possible that these names are referring to people from Cyprus, Rhodes, or southern Anatolia.
-However, paintings of these "Keftu" at that time make them look like what we would consider to be Minoans, so who knows? There's other evidence to suggest they were Minoans too...
-Minoans also founded colonies in the Cyclades, Cythera (off the coast of SE Peloponnese), Rhodes, etc.
-Essentially "Middle Minoan" and "Middle Cyclades" are the same period because due to Crete's heavy cultural influence on the Cyclades during this time.
-Although Minoan chronology is divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods (based on pottery designs), another archaeologist proposed a new form of chronology based on its architecture- pre-palatial, proto-palatial, neo-palatial, and post-palatial periods.
-2000-1700 BC- proto-palatial period.
-The first palace in Crete was built at Knossos (outside of modern-day Haraklion, Crete), which is also arguably the oldest city in Europe!
-Other palaces were built at Phaistos (near Knossos), Malia (roughly 30 km east of Knossos), Zakros (east coast of Crete), and maybe some others.
-It is unknown as to if these city-states were ever consolidated into a unified functioning political unit, or if they were just a loose federation of self-ruling states.
-The closest source we have for the Minoans in terms of an actual historian explaining who the fuck these people were is through Thucydides, and even he wasn't around until the 5th century BC! That's like roughly 1000 years after the collapse of the Minoan civilization!
-Thucydides talks about the Minoans while providing some background info on the Peloponnesian War.
-Thucydides talks about a king named Minos (where the name "Minoans" comes from) who was the first ruler of Crete and who operated a maritime empire and was the first person in Greece to organize a legitimate navy. He also was the one who led the Minoans to dominate the Cyclades and stamp out piracy and shit.
-Of course, historians disagree on if the Minoans actually dominated other people or if it was just their culture and trade that caused others to culturally assimilate to them.
-It's also entirely possible that Thucydides was using the legend of King Minos (or maybe he just straight up made the dude up?) to try and illustrate a precedence for the need for the Athenians to crack down on piracy, but of course who the fuck knows for sure.
-Myths of Ancient Crete
-King Minos
-King Minos was the son of Zeus (who was in the form of a bull at the time of Minos' conception) and Europa (a human). Zeus had stolen Europa on his back and had fled with her from Tyre (a Phoenician city in modern-day southern Lebanon) to Crete (which is where we get the name "Europe" from!). At Crete he banged Europa and she eventually gave birth to three sons- Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Then Europa married King Asterion (the current ruler of Crete at that time). When King Asterion died he named Minos as heir (Asterion had died with no biological sons of his own). I guess Minos didn't like his brothers or didn't want them fucking up his grasp on power, so he had them exiled. As king, Minos prayed to gods to send him a sign that would show to him that they approved of his succession, and it worked- Poseidon sent him a beautiful, divine white bull that he was to sacrifice in their honor, but King Minos stupidly decided to switch out the white bull with a regular one, which of course didn't fool anyone and just pissed off the gods, so they punished King Minos by having his wife, Queen Pasiphae, suddenly develop a bizarre bull fetish, and she ended up banging the divine white bull; eventually, she gave birth to a half-man, half-bull monster (who would come to be known as "the Minotaur"). Horrified, King Minos decided to hire Daedalus (it was Daedalus who made it possible for Pasiphae to have sex with the bull, as she had convinced him to design a wooden cow for her to have sex with (so I guess it would make it easier for her to have sex with a real one? idk)), a genius Athenian engineer, to design an elaborate underground labyrinth underneath the palace at Knossos; it was here where the Minotaur would be imprisoned). In order to make sure that the solution to the labyrinth was never discovered, King Minos then decided to have Daedalus and his son Icarus (why also him?) imprisoned in a tower. Of course, Daedalus had already figured out a way to escape- they would fly out of the tower with artificial wings that Daedalus would make out of feather, string, and wax (somehow). However, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too high because that would make the wax melt (too close to the sun), nor should he fly too low (because then water from the sea could get into the feathers of the wings and fuck them up). Unfortunately, Icarus ended up flying too high, so the wax of his wings melted and he plunged into the ocean and drowned. Luckily, although Icarus didn't survive the trip, Daedalus was able to successfully escape to Sicily, where he was taken in by King Cocalus of the city of Kamikos (unclear as to if this king or city ever actually existed). After this, one of King Minos' sons, Androgeos, was killed in Athens, so King Minos declared war on Athens, and won! As a result, King Aegias had to send seven young boys and seven young girls every nine years to King Minos, whereupon he would feed them to the Minotaur! Finally, King Aegias' son, Theseus, volunteered to go to the Labyrinth to try and kill the Minotaur (and also get out alive, of course). King Aegias said that this was fine, but only if Theseus remembered to change the sails from black to white when he returned home by ship to Athens so that his dad would know that he had been successful in his quest. Anyway, when Theseus arrived at Knossos, King Minos' daughter, Princess Ariadne, was immediately smitten with Theseus and desperately wanted him to survive the Labyrinth, so she gave him a ball of thread so that he could find his way back to the beginning of the Labyrinth by tying it to the entrance. Of course, Theseus was ultimately successful in slaying the Minotaur, and then he left the Labyrinth and sailed back home with Ariadne. However, unfortunately for her she didn't make it back to Athens, as Theseus ended up abandoning her on the island of Naxos (in the Cyclades); eventually, she married the god Dionysus! Anyway, as Theseus was returning to Athens he forgot to change the sails from black to white, so when the king went to the cliffs overlooking the sea and saw the ships with black sails, he assumed the worst and jumped off because he couldn't stand living with the grief. Doh! So, this is where we get the name for the Aegean Sea- from King Aegias! Moving on, King Minos ends up getting killed in Kamikos by Daedalus (not too sure what Minos was doing there).
-It's entirely possible that there's actually some truth to the legend of King Minos.
-One theory is that "Minos" in Minoan meant "king" (similar to "Caesar" essentially meaning "emperor" in Latin).
-Another theory is that "King Minos" is just the Minoan version of other legendary founders of ancient kingdoms due to a similarity in the names (Menes of Egypt's First Dynasty, Mannus of the Germanic tribes, Manu of Dravidia (in modern-day southern India), Manes of Maeonia/Lydia (in modern-day Turkey), Mizraim of the Egyptians (according to the Israelites), etc.
-According to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (c. 1st century BC) and the Greek-Roman historian plutarch (1st-2nd century AD), there were TWO kings named Minos who had ruled over Crete at some point.
-The first one was the son of Zeus and was a good ruler; he eventually became one of the three judges of the dead in Hades.
-The second one was a shitty king who turned the Minoans into a evil maritime empire.
-Anyway, it's unclear as to the exact details of what was going on in Crete during this time, but it was obvious that they were quite powerful compared to neighboring peoples.
-They developed the world's first system of indoor plumbing FFS! Also had heated floors, clay pipes for obtaining clean water, flush toilets, and hot and cold water for baths.
-This shit wouldn't be seen again (at this level) until the Romans (at least in terms of Western civilization).
-Minoans also had a system of writing- originally used pictographs called Cretan hieroglyphs.
-However, by 1800 BC they had a developed a linear script which used symbols that represented syllables and joined together to form the sounds of words.
-Called "Linear A" by scholars (as opposed to "Linear B", which would be developed later), it was used in parallel with Cretan hieroglyphs.
-Linear A was typically used for records, lists, etc.
-Minoan royalty and nobles seem to have lived in extreme luxury compared with how the common folk lived.
-Scholars believe that the king also acted as a judge and was seen as having divine connections as well- either divine heritage, powers, or communication abilities, and represented the people to the gods.
-This would make sense, as in the near east during this time the rulers of cities were often priest-kings. However, Crete seems to not have had massive temples or anything like that, and most likely the palaces acted as temples for religious stuff. There were, however, shrines belonging to tree cults, apparently.
-We aren't too sure about the details regarding Minoan religion during this time other than that they seemed to have worshiped the forces of nature and were polytheists, worshiping primarily female deities (including a fertility/mother goddess, among others).
-They were also really into imagery involving bulls, and had lots of bull sacrifices and shit.
-Had a bunch of art, most of which had a heavy Egyptian influence, but they didn't seem to bother too much with portraying the rulers as powerful conquerors or whatever; instead, they usually just created art depicting animals, nature, and stuff like that.
-For sports, they seemed to have been really into "bull-leaping" (catching the horns of a charging bull and then somersaulting along its back), which may have also been done for religious purposes (it's unclear).
-Perhaps were a matriarchal society.
-Because they were so important for trade and were isolated on the island of Crete, they didn't have to worry too much about defense or the threat of invasion.
-This is backed up by the fact that (as far as we can tell) they didn't have any walls or fortresses, and their art never seemed to have any violence in it (the weapons featured in some of the artworks seems to have been for ceremonial purposes).
-However, it's likely that they had to deal with piracy in terms of their trade ships getting raided at sea, so it's probably not like the Minoans were just these pacifist merchant-hippies just chilling in Crete.
-So, if everything was going so well for the Minoans, then what went wrong?
-c. 1700 BC- a huge earthquake destroyed many of the Minoan palaces, including the on at Knossos. However, they were luckily able to rebuild their structures and reorganize, and this actually kicked off the Minoan's golden age of art and culture in the Mediterranean.
-During this time the Minoans also made great innovations in bronze technology, including figuring out how to make bronze knives stronger (so that they wouldn't bend) and longer, allowing for the creation of bronze swords.
-These bronze sword designs eventually began appearing elsewhere in the Near East and the Aegean Sea regions, and Minoan bronzesmiths were considered to be the best in the business.
-c. 1650-1625 BC- huge volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini (AKA Thira), South Aegean) in the Cyclades, 90 miles north of Crete.
-Was such a massive eruption that it seems to have played a significant role in some stories in Greek mythology, as well as perhaps the origin of the legend of Atlantis!
-It's entirely possible that its effects were felt as far away as China (during the fall of the semi-mythical Xia dynasty)!
-Unfortunately, we don't have any records of this event from the Egyptians during this time because I guess it Egypt was going through some shit during this time (they were being invaded by the Hyksos), although there were records noting heavy rainfalls or something.
-Most scholars agree that this eruption was a catalyst for the collapse of the Minoan civilization.
-The old theory was that the ash from the eruption killed off a bunch of plant-like vegetation on Crete and caused massive starvation. This seems to have been debunked, however.
-The latest theory is that the eruption caused tsunamis (with waves of perhaps up to 65 feet high!) which destroyed many of the port cities and towns on Crete's northern coast (not to mention a ton of Minoan ships!). This crippled the Minoan civilization, which had thrived on trade. Additionally, the ash from the volcano blotted out the sun, which fucked up the weather and the farming system, and the archaeological evidence indicates that there was a significant drop in the quality of life for the Minoans.
-Because of the power vacuum in the region caused by the eruption, by the time the Minoans finally got their shit back together it was too late- the Mycenaean civilization of mainland Greece were the new dominant power in the region. Unfortunately for the Minoans, their 15 minutes of fame had passed.
-The Mycenaeans at this time were mainly concerned with expanding their influence and culture through naval warfare, so they began to engage in heavy fighting with the Egyptians and Hittites but didn't seem to have too much trouble conquering the Minoans :(
-It was easy to invade Crete because they had always been pretty unprepared for any kind of serious invasion.
-Thus, c. 1450-1425 BC, the Minoans were conquered by the Mycenaeans. Crete's palaces were burned (except for the main palace at Knossos), as well as other estates and even entire villages!
-Anyway, although the Mycenaeans had conquered the Minoans, they were clearly heavily influenced by them before and afterwards, so it appears as if they absorbed the Minoan culture rather than erasing it completely.
-They also used a new system of writing ("Linear B") which we eventually figured out (in the 1950s) that it was not only a mix of Linear A with the Mycenaean language, but also a precursor to Modern Greek!
-It was most likely the case that the Mycenaeans were relatively barbaric compared to the Minoans, so once the Mycenaeans conquered Crete they began to absorb Minoan culture (including palace-based economics and shit) in a way that made it back to the mainland, and the Mycenaean overlords of Crete began to rule in a way that resulted in an eventual combined "Minoan-Mycenaean" culture.
-The Minoan-Mycenaean culture was also influenced by other cultures of the Near East, as well as Egypt.
-Unfortunately, c. 1375-1350 BC Crete was invaded and fucked up again, most likely by other mainland Mycenaeans who were rivals of the Mycenaeans who were ruling Crete at that time.
-Crete's power and influence was again crippled, and although it was fine after this it would never become powerful again, as other Greek cities and cultures would continue to dominate the region over time.
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