Discovered civilization on Crete Island
This long story was enough to stimulate people’s curiosity. Archeologists, in particular, didn’t just let this story slide. Because I thought the United States might actually exist. And then finally comes the discovery of this mysterious archaeological entity in the myth.
And the ruins of the palace were discovered by British archaeologist Sir Arthur John Evans. In 1894, Evans was wandering around the antique alleys of Athens Market. He came out in the morning and looked carefully at the little stones with high capitals.
Evans wondered where these stones came from. I held onto the antique disabled and questioned them inquisitively. Merchants told this eccentric Brit that the stones were mainly from Crete Island.
And Evans followed the archaeologist today to the island of Crete, and he scoured the island and found that in Iraklion, the largest city on the island, he found that the Cephalus Hill, which was covered with olive trees, was the source of the rock.
Evans bought the whole hill with a premonition that there would be an undiscovered civilization here. Finally, in 1900, the first shovel for excavation was launched. But on the second day of the excavation, murals were discovered, and soon after, countless artifacts poured out.
Evans was so happy that he declared himself to have discovered the legendary king Minoan civilization. And we call the Crete civilization the mythical civilization of King Minos or Minoan civilization.
Excavate It turned out to be a huge palace site. It’s called the Knossos Palace. The Knossos Palace had over 1,000 rooms arranged in a maze. Like the labyrinth in which Minotaurus is trapped. The palace found is believed to be this generation of palaces built around 1750 B.C. on the site after the first palace was destroyed in an earthquake and fire.
The Knossos Palace is a world-sized football field with buildings arranged in the east, west, north, and south, centering on a rectangular central garden. The three-four-story building has about 1,400 rooms, which vary in size, shape, and direction, and the number of floors is not clear, so it is reminiscent of a mythical palace.
During the most prosperous period of civilization, the Palace of Knossos served as the center of the island’s political, economic, cultural, and religious life, and it is estimated that about 30,000 people lived inside and outside the castle.
Like this, the Knossos Palace was in its golden age, but it ended its splendid curtain around 1450 and disappeared into history. There are two theories about the cause of its destruction.
The first is that it was caused by a volcanic eruption on Santorini Island, 120 kilometers north of Crete, around 1600. The theory is that these volcanic eruptions hit the island of Crete with tsunamis and earthquakes, and civilization slowly declined.
This volcanic eruption was the second-largest eruption in 10,000 years and appears to have occurred up to 90 meters high. The disaster would have destroyed the palace and covered the sky with volcanic ash, leading to years of famine on the island of Crete.
Santorini Island became what it is now Caldera due to a volcanic eruption. The refreshing view of Santorini Island, which is famous as a tourist destination, is ironically due to the disaster at that time.
For reference, it is argued that Santorini Island, or Terra Island, where this volcanic eruption took place, was Atlantis, a very ancient civilization and utopia that disappeared as a whole by buying the anger of Zeus in Plato’s book.
After all, the glory of Atlantis represents the prosperity of the Minoan civilization. Another theory is that the fall of the Minoan civilization was caused by the invasion of the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece.
Minoan civilization, which had already lost its power in a natural disaster around 1500, was destroyed by the invasion of the Mycenaean army. So the hegemony of maritime trade and the hegemony of the Aegean Sea shifted to the Mycenaean civilization famous for the Trojan War.
The Knossos factory became the palace of the Mycenaeans, and the Minoans either became slaves to the Mycenaeans or gradually assimilated into them.
European civilization, Greek civilization, the Mycenaean civilization, and Minoan civilization
Is Minoan, who founded the first European civilization, and Mycenaean, who inherited the next civilization, different peoples? For quite some time, they’ve been regarded as completely different people.
In particular, while the linear letter B of the excavated Mycenae took the form of early Greek, the linear letter A of the Minoan civilization was an unfamiliar letter that had not yet been decoded, so it was accepted that the Mycenaean were the Indo-European languages people in the northern plains of the Black Sea today and that they were the founders of the Mycenaean civilization.
However, an analysis by researchers at the Howard Hughes Institute of Medicine in the United States, published in Nature in 2017, tells a different story. In other words, as a result of extracting DNA, Mycenaean, and Minoan share a lot of genes. I
n particular, three-quarters of these genes come from the first farmers in Western Anatolia, what is now Turkey. The idea of a completely different ethnic invasion of the North is overshadowed.
However, Mycenaeans share three-quarters of the genes with Minoans. However, given that we have an additional four to 16 percent of the genes in the northern part of the Black Sea, it can be estimated that people using Indo-European languages moved rapidly or sporadically and brought in Greek.
So to sum up, the Mycenaeans and the Minoans share their Eastern ancestors, but we can see that the Greek language was introduced by the Northern ancestors that are found only in the Mycenaeans.
However, some scholars believe that the genetic content of the northern prairie is low and that the Greek language was already widespread in the Aegean Sea even before the northern ancestors brought it.
The Mycenaeans in mainland Greece were also called the Acacias. Because the Mycenaean civilization formed a civilization around the Acacia region. As the first Neolithic farmers migrated, farming was their main business at first. They grew olives, figs, and vines
However, mainland Greece was a land with a lot of calcareous rocks, making it difficult for large-scale farming. This barren environment eventually drives the Mycenaeans out into the sea. Because as the population grew, we had to get grain from somewhere. The Mycenaeans honed their navigation skills and began to pioneer the sea. And I tried to get the local olive oil and wine on the ship and somehow trade it with other regions.
Fortunately, it was surrounded by land, so the wave was not high and there were many islands, so I was able to step on the ground within 110 kilometers if I wanted to, and the weather was sunny. It’s the best environment for long-distance ports. And finally, after so many attempts and so many efforts, they had a route to go to another area.
The rivers of the natural environment, or with the help of the help, the Mykheans were reborn as perfect sailors. They went beyond the Hittite Empire in Mesopotamia, Egypt, to what was then considered an unknown land.
Mycenaean pottery was also found in Libya North Africa and in Western Italy. However, Mycenaeans that gather the aspects of the target cannot be seen as one strong identity.
It was difficult to build a unified kingdom because mainland Greece was full of rugged mountains and surrounded by the sea. Around 1600 B.C., when the Mycenaean civilization began to show its presence, several small kingdoms had their own systems.
But the most powerful of these kingdoms was the Kingdom of Mycenaean, and because they had loose ties, they gave their name to civilization. When the Mycenaeans, who grew up in that way, took advantage of the decline of the Minoan civilization due to volcanic disasters, they conquered the island of Crete around 1450 and took over the maritime hegemony of the Aegean.
Since then, the Mycenaean civilization has built a powerful empire for 200 years, enjoying a golden age. However, if the previous Minoans maintained the maritime empire through trade and negotiations, the Mycenaeans did not hesitate not only to trade but also to war.
So they were merchants and warriors and pirates. The Mycenaeans built huge, strong walls at high places to reinforce their settlements, and they made inroads into the coastal regions of Anatolia, following Crete Island. In the process, of course, there must have been a profit battle over maritime rights.
The Trojan War in Homer’s epic poem
One of the conflicts is the Trojan War in Homer’s epic poem. The great poet Homer wrote in Illiad that there was a major war between Troy and the Mycenaean civilization around 1,250. And of course, this is a mysterious epic story of human war and the story of the gods.
In mythology, the Trojan War is a war in which Prince Paris of Troy kidnaps Helene, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta and the most beautiful woman in the world, with the help of Aphrodite.
This war, in which the Greek allied forces invaded Troy with large troops and ships, lasted more than a decade, with Mycenaean King Agamemnon as the general commander, and tells the story of the activities of the hero Achilles and the fall of Troy by the Trojan horse.
Scholars believe that if this war was a historical fact, it would have been a conflict over maritime hegemony, not because of the government. In other words, Mycenaean and other small Greek kingdoms.
During their heyday, they extended their influence all the way to the Black Sea coast, and they fought a war with the Trojan Kingdom, which was on its way. However, it is not yet clear whether this war was true.
It just assumes that if Homer’s work was based on real events, this war would have taken place between 1300 and 1,250 BC. Of course, if it weren’t for Homer, it wouldn’t have been a matter of fact about the Trojan War.
