Civilization came to Europeans later than it did to people in West Asia, North Africa, India and China. It was preceded by agriculture and the raising of animals, which appeared in sunny Greece as early as 6000 BCE -- around the time that people there built stone walls around their villages, presumably to protect themselves from wild animals and marauding outsiders. A debate exists as to whether the move to agriculture was an internal cultural development or it was introduced to Europe by migrants from the Near East and Asia Minor.
An online article in Science Daily (February 22, 2011) reads:
Results provide evidence that indigenous hunter-gatherers in central Europe were largely replaced or assimilated by incoming Near-Eastern farmers in the core region of south-east and Central Europe. However, hunter-gatherer populations survived in outlying regions and adopted some of the cultural practices from neighboring farming communities
After 6000 BCE, farming spread from Greece into the colder southern Balkans. Between 5000 and 4000 BCE it spread up the Danube River into central Europe, along the Rhine River, the Netherlands, Gaul and finally into what is nowSwitzerland. During these years Europeans used digging sticks and hoes made of wood. They had stone axes with a sharpened and polished edge, and they had stone knives for reaping their crops. They used ornamented pottery. And where wood was plentiful they built log homes – as large as thirty by forty meters Humanity likes to tinker and, like others, the Europeans did much of this. To make it easier for their oxen to transport their loads they hitched the oxen to carts with solid wooden wheels. They began weaving and embroidering. They made skis for hunting during winter. In southern Britain, southern Scandinavia and in what is now Russia, people built mineshafts to follow seams of flint. They used fire to loosen the flint and shovels made from the shoulder blades of cattle. And along the western coast of Spain they built great stone monuments to their dead, a practice that soon spread to Scandinavia.
In Europe, copper had been picked from the ground and used as jewelry. The Europeans shaped the copper by pounding it cold. Then someone discovered that heating copper made it more malleable. Working with metals had begun in southeastern Europe as early as around 4600 BCE – almost a thousand years before it reached Asia Minor. Around 3300 BCE, flint tools were still widely used in Europe – while copper, silver and lead were being smelted in Spain. But soon the working of copper spread through much of Europe. Copper workers made plaques, wires, copper punches, axe and adze heads, pins, and jewelry such as spiral armbands. They crafted copper and gold to adorn their religious idols and as offerings to their gods. Those working copper sought to maintain a supply of the ore, and after the year 3000 prospectors looking for copper ore were combing Europe and creating copper mines.
urope remained less densely populated than West Asia and Egypt, but a great migration into Europe began as warrior-herding peoples from farther east moved into Eastern Europe searching for pasture for their animals. Sometime after 3000 BCE an Indo-European people called Balts – including Lithuanians – and a Finnic people called Estonians settled along the Baltic Sea, near the West Dvina River. From Asia came more Indo-Europeans, who would be called Slavs, and they settled around the Vistula, Bug and Dnieper rivers. Between 2900 and 2700 BCE more Indo-Europeans came, and they settled in and around what are now Belgium and the Netherlands, near where the Rhine River runs into the sea. They brought to Western Europe a new kind of husbandry of animals, and they brought individual burial as opposed to the group burials practiced by Europeans before them.
Around 2500 BCE, small communities of metal working tradesmen from Spain began peaceful migrations. They are called Bell Beakers after their pottery, and they too buried their dead individually. Europe was rich in the deposits of tin needed for making bronze, and the Bell Beakers exploited local sources of copper and tin. The Bell Beakers began trading in bronze, in addition to gold, amber and perhaps furs. By around 2000 BCE the Bell Beakers had traveled as far as what is today the Czech Republic in central Europe, as far as Corsica,Sicily and North Africa, and they had entered Britain as far north as Scotland.
In Britain the Bell Beakers played a major role in the birth of Wessex culture of southern Britain - where people grew barley, wheat and raised sheep and cattle.Wessex became a prosperous area that benefited from the commercial talents of its chiefs, who acted as middlemen in trade with Cornwall, Ireland, Central Europe and the Balkans. And with the rise in population and prosperity from trade, Wessex began to take on the characteristics of civilization, including distinctions between aristocrats and commoners.
Mycenae Greeks, Minoans and a Dark Age
Between the years 2300 and 2000, Indo-Europeans moved south into Greece. Around 1500 BCE those called Mycenae Greeks established fortifications on a hilltop overlooking fresh water – about 90 kilometers south of what is today Athens. From there they dominated much of southern Greece, making themselves an aristocracy over those who had migrated there many centuries before. They had gods similar to other Indo-Europeans, including a father god of the sky called Zeus, whom they believed held power over the entire world.
The Mycenae Greeks came into contact with sea-going tradesmen, the Minoans of Crete – an island one hundred miles south of Greece. Minoan civilization was about as old as Egypt's. It was a commercial society with people differing greatly in wealth, with rule by the wealthy and a government with a well-organized bureaucracy. Workmen in Crete produced fine vases, sheet metal, tweezers, stonework and other artifacts. Wealthy Minoans lived in palaces with plastered walls, which they decorated with art, palaces that show the influence of Hittites and Mesopotamians.
http://www.minoancrete.com/
MINOAN CRETE
Between 3000 and 1100 BCE a unique civilization developed and flourished on the island of Crete. The arrival of new peoples, new technologies and new ideas transformed the small pre-existing neolithic communities over a period of hundreds of years. By 2000 BCE the Minoans began to build palaces, conducted trade across wide areas of the eastern Mediterranean, developed a hierarchical society with centralised administration and produced wonderful pottery, jewellery, statues, carvings, frescoes and other artefacts.
Remains of dozens of sites where the Minoans lived and worked can still be seen on Crete today. The aim of this web site is to provide a well illustrated introduction to all the major and many of the minor archaeological sites of Minoan Crete, using text based on excavators' reports as well as plans, photos and video clips. I hope that in the process you will also discover something of the life of the people who occupied these sites.
This website is for anyone with an interest in Minoan civilisation -- tourists, students, archaeologists professional and amateur. Teachers and students of archaeology may be particularly interested in some of the photos, videos and reports of lesser known sites which may not be easily obtainable in their own countries. Archaeologists, teachers and students are welcome to freely use the contents of this site within their educational institutions.
he Minoans ( Greek: Μινωίτες) were a civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea. Ceramic items created during the Neolithic period in Crete date to 7000 BC and the height of the Minoan culture flourished from approximately 2700 to 1450 BC when their culture was superseded by the Mycenaean culture. The Minoans were one of the civilizations that flourished in and around the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age of Greece. These civilizations had much contact with each other, sometimes making it difficult to judge the extent to which the Minoans influenced, or were influenced by, their neighbors. Based on depictions in Minoan art, Minoan culture is often characterized as a matrilineal society centered on goddess worship.
The term "Minoan" was coined by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans after the mythic "king" Minos associated with the labyrinth, which Evans identified as the site at Knossos. It is not known whether "Minos" was a personal name or a title. What the Minoans called themselves is unknown, although the Egyptian place name "Keftiu" (*kaftāw) and the Semitic "Kaftor" or "Caphtor" and "Kaptara" in the Mari archives apparently refers to the island of Crete.
Rather than give calendar dates for the Minoan period, archaeologists use two systems of relative chronology. The first, created by Evans and modified by later archaeologists, is based on potterystyles. It divides the Minoan period into three main eras—Early Minoan (EM), Middle Minoan (MM), and Late Minoan (LM). These eras are further subdivided, e.g. Early Minoan I, II, III (EMI, EMII, EMIII). Another dating system, proposed by the Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, is based on the development of the architectural complexes known as "palaces" at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Kato Zakros, and divides the Minoan period into Prepalatial, Protopalatial, Neopalatial, and Post-palatial periods. The relationship among these systems is given in the accompanying table, with approximate calendar dates drawn from Warren and Hankey (1989).
All calendar dates given in this article are approximate, and the subject of ongoing debate.
The Thera eruption occurred during a mature phase of the LM IA period. The calendar date of the volcanic eruption is extremely controversial; see the article on Thera eruption for discussion. It often is identified as a catastrophic natural event for the culture, leading to its rapid collapse, perhaps being related mythically as Atlantis by Classical Greeks.
The Minoan Civilization is the culture that flourished on the island of Crete, in the Aegean Sea, during the III and II millennia BC.It is named after King Minos, who was recorded in Greek tradition as a prehistoric king of Crete.Minoan culture is divided into three periods:
The Minoan civilization was first recognized as distinct from the Mycenaean civilization of mainland Greece by Sir Arthur Evans, the British excavator of its largest site, the palace of Knossos.
Other palaces have been excavated at Phaistos, Mallia, and Kato Zakros, and new discoveries indicate the likelihood of a palace at Khania in western Crete. Minoan settlements have been found on other islands of the southern Aegean—notably Thera, Melos, Kythera (Cythera), Keos (Kea), and Rhodes. Minoan exports are found throughout the eastern half of the Mediterranean region.
Little was known of the prehistory of Crete before 1900, when Evans began his excavations at Knossos in the central sector of the island near the north coast.
He uncovered the greater part of the huge palace between 1900 and 1905, but work by the British School has continued up to the present, and it is now known that a substantial town lay outside the limits of the palace area.
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