Table of Contents
This History Hit film treats Minoan Crete as a Bronze Age story that is still half myth. The name comes from King Minos, not from a word the islanders are known to have used. Farmers from the Fertile Crescent reached Crete around 7000 BC with wheat and goats. Olives and grapes later fed oil, wine, and trade. Buildings called palaces were for gathering, storage, fresco, murex dye, and even a flushing toilet at Knossos. Contact with Egypt is offered as one source of writing and of large halls, reworked locally. The peaceful, woman-led picture is traced partly to later wishes. Violent scenes are rare, Evans first gave a wide throne to a woman, and priestesses appear in the tablets. Linear B can be read but says little about who ruled. Linear A still has no bilingual key. Evans published Knossos and also brought Victorian ideas that specialists now pull apart, while Duncan Mackenzie kept the daily dig record. The Santorini eruption is not treated as the direct end. Writing and frescoes faded, yet pots and shrines went on.
Key points
- Minoan is a modern label from the myth of Minos, not a known name the Cretans used for themselves.
- Palaces combined gathering, storage, fresco, purple dye, and early plumbing, including a flush toilet at Knossos.
- The peaceful and woman-led image is presented as partly a later wish laid over sparse violent pictures.
- Linear B can be read and still says little about rule, while Linear A has no bilingual key.
- Evans is both the publisher of Knossos and a wealthy outsider whose ideas are now being revised.
- Santorini is not treated as the direct end, and daily life on Crete is said to have continued after the palaces.
Short quotes
time and they were impressive buildings they had colorful frescoes on the wall they were places where people gathered
History Hit, Historians on Minoan Crete
The palaces are introduced as grand painted halls where people came together. Watch at 4:05
first excavators this was a very Advanced building it even had its own plumbing system in the second millennium
History Hit, Historians on Minoan Crete
Knossos is offered as an advanced building because it already had plumbing in the second millennium BC. Watch at 6:08
we do have texts which have been deciphered the Linear B tablets they don't actually tell us much about the
History Hit, Historians on Minoan Crete
Even the script specialists can read is said to reveal little about how the society was run. Watch at 22:12
minoan Crete is that you're often untangling the myths not only which have come down from early Greece but also the
History Hit, Historians on Minoan Crete
Studying Crete is framed as sorting island evidence from stories inherited from early Greece. Watch at 32:13
Video by History Hit. Watch on YouTube.