Interesting video onthe proto-European Minoan Crete civilization
For a long time I have been fascinated with the lost Minoan civilization, which came to an abrupt end around 1600 BC.
Its not mentioned in this video but excavations at the site of Akrotiri tell of human sacrifice, in the shadow of the erupting volcano. Theysuggest human sacrifices were occurring.
This was the most advanced civilization in the world at that time? Scary.
Or were they? Were they actually heinous barbarians.
Even more interesting is the myth of the Minotaur.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJn94digDDw]
Reconstructions of the palace at Knossos show a building that looks surprisingly modern.It was huge and went on and on.
and on and on. Of course any student of mythology will recognize the myth of the Minotaur as having been sited there. All myths enclose a grain of truth. What truth is enclosed within this myth?
he bones of children perhaps ritually flayed were discovered in the vicinity of the palace complex. Had they been sacrificed?
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I have read a few things of that age
45 years ago I read of cave drawings in (malta? France?) depicting horned men carrying off prisoners. It was thought these depicted the Minoan culture.
Minotaur. Minoan. They wore horned helms.
I read ten years later about an Egyptian telling a Greek that they didn't remember the great civilization they'd had before the last cataclysm and that there had been cataclysms nearly wiping out mankind many times before that. All records of these past civilizations were later lost with the destruction of the Great Library.
I have been into mythology of the area since i was a kid.
What a mystery! Would love to go there. The many plagues of Egypt in the Old Testament is thought to refer to the aftermath of the eruption of the Thera volcano's impact on the weather. Its date was in the 1600's BC. It changed the entire Mediterranean area. Not many cultures had any form of writing at that time that we could understand now. But its likely that records do exist,
It is thought that Plato's Atlantis myth refers to the huge volcanic eruption at the island we now call Santorini - blowing the top off of the huge island and creating a very large deep hole in the middle.. a really huge eruption that wiped out the Minoan culture and caused tsunamis that washed over the whole island of Crete, leaving debris very high up on its slopes. Since we knew so little before and it seems the Minoan culture was very important, we are learning a lot now.
The Minoans had very complex, planned, naturally lit, well decorated and strikingly well-designed buildings four or more stories high (with indoor plumbing. several thousand years before the British did).