The Ancients - Rise of the Minoans

Episode Date: June 8, 2025

Tristan Hughes journeys into the heart of one of history's most intriguing civilisations: the Minoans. With Professor Nicoletta Momigliano, he explores the origins and rise of these Bronze Age titans on Crete around 7,000 BC, their early settlements, and the emergence of complex societies.Packed with archaeological insights, Tristan hears about the enigma of the Minoans early settlements, the mysteries of their undeciphered writing system, to the grandeur of their monumental palaces such as Knossos. A fascinating discussion on one of history's most mysterious Bronze Age societies.MOREThe Minotaurhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/72Efg0BmVFYunKg2FsDOQOThe Legacy of the Minoanshttps://shows.acast.com/the-ancients/episodes/thelegacyoftheminoansPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting HistoryHit.com slash subscribe. Calgary, also known as the blue sky city. We get more sunny days than anywhere in the country, but more importantly, we're the Canadian capital of blue sky thinking.

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Curse of the Umbiwi. Starring Caleb McLaughlin of Stranger Things fame, delivering an electrifying performance, Sacrilege follows the story of the Wallace family, whose vacation to a luxury game reserve in Zimbabwe quickly unravels when Dasheen Wallace, played by McLaughlin, unwittingly desecrates hallowed ground and unleashes the M'Bi'wi, a vengeful entity born from centuries of colonial oppression. As possessed wildlife and shape-shifting horrors close in, Daschen must confront not only the supernatural threat, but also the horrors of his own past to save what remains of his family.

Written and directed by visionary creator Nayasha Hartendi and presented in spectacular Dolby Atmos, Sacrilege blends pulse-pounding suspense with powerful explorations of identity and privilege to deliver a thriller as thought-provoking as it is terrifying. We all have our demons. Listen to Sacrilege, Curse of the Embiowee now. Go to audible.ca slash sacrilege. Hello, Tristan here. I hope you're doing well. We're all good here at History Hit Towers. Now you might not know, but on and off I've been posting polls on Spotify asking listeners which topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes. Now, one that was overwhelmingly popular was the Minoans. And I'm delighted with that. There is so much interesting stuff about this

Bronze Age civilisation. So much mystery, so many million dollar questions for archaeologists. In fact, we quickly realised when recording this episode that we couldn't do the Minoans justice with just one interview. We needed more time. So this is Rise of the Minoans. We're talking about the roots of these people and how they flourished. There'll be more episodes to continue the story really soon and we'll delve into more marvels and mysteries of the Minoans who were complete game changers. So let's get into it. 3,500 years ago, the island of Crete was home to one of the most extraordinary Bronze Age civilizations in the world. The Minoans. Named after the legendary Minos, king of Knossos, who controlled the Minotaur in a great labyrinth

beneath his palace. Now the myth of the Minotaur, half man half bull, is of course fictional, but the great wealth and prestige of the Minoans, now archaeology has proven that to be true. From their beautiful frescoes to the monumental palaces, the Minoans have fascinated millions ever since their rediscovery in the 19th century, and we're covering part of their story today. It's the Ancients on History hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today we're going to explore the emergence of the Minoans on Crete.

We'll delve into the origins of this culture at the dawn of metallurgy. We'll look into the surviving sources and the Minoans' mysterious writing system, Linear A. We'll explore the emergence of more complex societies on Minoan Crete, centred around great palaces and strange words like W Wanax that came to be associated with them. All of that and more is to come in today's chat.

Our guest is Professor Nicoletta Momigliano from the University of Bristol. Nico has been on the Ancients before to talk all about the legacy of the Minoans, how they were interpreted and reinterpreted by different peoples over the 19th and 20th centuries after their rediscovery. We'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. Now Nico's back to delve into some fascinating topics of the Bronze Age Minoans. Nico, such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. Welcome back. Niko Niko

Thank you for having me again. Thank you. Toby You're more than welcome. To talk more about the Minoans, are they still quite a mysterious Bronze Age civilisation, Niko? Niko Yes, definitely, definitely still very mysterious. If only because although we can sort of read some of their writings, we don't understand them. Because the few remaining inscriptions that we have that seem to express the language or languages spoken by the Minoans the language or languages spoken by the Minoans are very, very few. And although, as I said, we might be able to read them, what we read doesn't sound like any language we really know. People have made all kinds of suggestions.

I mean, we may know some of the names of the divinities, also because we know some of the names of the divinities. We can make educated guesses from later texts, texts written in Linear B, which is another script that was in use in the Aegean during the Bronze Age. And we know that Linear B expressed a form of Greek. And in some of the Linear B inscriptions, we have names of what seems to be names of deities that are not Greek names. And these deities are recorded in linear B tablets that were found on Crete at the famous archeological site of Knossos.

And they seem to be a list of local divinities and they have strange names like Asasara, Pituna and so on. But otherwise they are very mysterious, partly because all we have is images and archaeological evidence, you know, unlike the Greeks, unlike the Romans, or even the Sumerians, or Egyptians, where we have lots and lots of text. For Minoans, very little. So they are still very mysterious.

I mean, Nico, as this chat goes on, I will ask more about the writing and that linear A text that you highlighted just there, and also something called the Phaistos Disc, which sounds very, very interesting. But if we go to the source material that archaeologists like yourself have for learning more about the Minoans, I mean, what types of sources do you have available to learn more about the mysterious Minoans. What types of sources do you have available to learn more about the mysterious Minoans? Citella Storch Well, we have all the usual sources that archaeologists have. Their finds, their architecture, frescoes, and also other kinds of evidence, such as what they ate. You know, a lot of what archaeologists dig

are just garbage, literally refuse pits where you find all kinds of interesting garbage. And also we can find more about the Minoans from their own bones, because apart from settlements, ritual places, places where people perform religious religious rituals we also have quite a lot of cemeteries. So we can learn something about the menons by just looking at their bones. And the rubbish includes animal bones but also seeds pollen levels we can we can gather from cores dug in the soil, and we can tell what they ate and what they cultivated and what they hunted. Mason. There's nothing that gets a student of archaeology more interested in the topic than a very exciting prehistoric garbage pile is what I've learned

over the few years isn't it because it might not sound very glamorous but actually you can learn so much as you say about what they eat, about their lifestyle, their societies and then also I guess DNA looking at actual human bones you can start piercing more about who these Minoan figures were. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we know from different kinds of evidence, for example, that the island of Crete was not permanently inhabited by human beings until around, let's say, ballpark figure, 7,000 BC. And we also know from all kinds of archaeological evidence like the one we have just talked about from what they ate and what they cultivated that these people. I arrived on the island of creed. from somewhere in southwest Turkey or northern Syria,

you know, kind of that area of the world. And we know that because before that on the islands, there was no trace of say sheep, pigs, barley, wheat, but these things had already been domesticated, cultivated in that part of the world. So we know roughly where they came from. And from 7000 BC onwards, we find permanent settlements on the island of Crete. Before that period, we have evidence that people probably visited the island evidence that people probably visited the island because we find instruments dating to earlier periods because we also have evidence of fauna like pygmy hippos and other animals

that have probably been hunted to death by the people who visited the island, but then people who actually settled permanently came later. We have a period of explorations and using the island of Crete, the heartland of the Minoan world, well before that, but permanent settlements only a bit later in the Neolithic period, which for Crete is around 7,000 BC. Mason. So these people come over, as you say, from present day Anatolia, from Turkey, they're farmers, so they're bringing their livestock with them. So can we say that they are the ancestors of the Minoans or are they proto-Minoans? When roughly do you go from these

being like the Stone Age farmers who preceded the Minoans to actually the beginnings of the Minoan civilization in Crete? Yes. The beginning of what we archaeologists have called and continue to call Minoan civilization is around 3000 BC. And between 7000 BC and 3000 BC, it is very likely possible that other people also reach the island from other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. But certainly a lot of the population of the people that we call Minoan must have descended from the first colonizer of the island. That is certain because, you know, there is no massive extinction of people. There is no clear mass migration of people from other areas.

There is evidence of people moving from other parts of the Aegean and possibly the Eastern Mediterranean onto Crete at different times of the second millennium BC. And the movement of people, the migration of people is a constant of Mediterranean life to think that, you know, there is no changes, that there are no new arrivals of populations ever, that the population is just the descendants of this small group. It's just not how life works in any country, in any situation. No, I think you're right, Nico, and we've done a few podcast episodes on the ancients over the years on Stone Age movements of people across oceans and seas, whether you're in

the islands of Britain and Orkney and Sh Shetland, and Ireland, and Brittany, or as you say, in the Mediterranean. So lots of movement in those thousands of years. Before we then get to the beginnings of Inouyean civilization, as you've mentioned there, around 3000 BC, Nico, that's exactly the same time places like New Grange in Ireland, the Great Passage Tomb in New Grange in Ireland is being built. That's a fascinating comparison there and before the pyramids. Nico, is this also aligned in regards to time period? Do you see the rise of the Minoan civilization also with the rise of metallurgy with copper and then bronze? Yes, indeed. Although there is evidence that metallurgy was already being exploited a bit earlier than that,

but it's when it starts becoming more common. So what we call the Minoan age, the Minoan period, is another way of calling the Bronze Age of Crete. In fact, some people don't even like the term Minoan civilization. Some people have said we should ditch this name because it's after mythical figure and we don't have any evidence that anybody called Minos or Minos ever existed. We should ditch this term. It is a term that has too much baggage. And we should simply call this the Cretan Bronze Age. I like it, I think it's very memorable. I think so too. And I think the name Minoan has an instant appeal and allure to many people across

the world. And I think that will be shown by the popularity of this podcast episode too. But you raised there an important point and almost a quick quick tangent by me, going back to the sources that you have to study the Minoans. So naturally archaeology and bones and DNA are important for learning more about the Minoans. Of course you've got the figure of King Minos and the story of the Minotaur, which are closely linked and we've done an episode on in the past. Now how important a source is Greek mythology and these mythological stories of things like the Minotaur? How important are they in also learning about the Minoans? Can we say that they help

archaeologists at all? Well, I think all these stories tell us much more about the later Greeks than they actually tell us about the people who lived on Crete in the Bronze Age. These are just stories that were invented later by people who, I think, lost something in translation, people who encountered ruins of palaces that they didn't remember who were built by and were built for. So Greek mythology doesn't tell us very much about the Cretan Bronze Age. It's as if you were trying to learn about Roman history from Shakespeare's Roman plays. These sources that we have contain some memories, but

they are pretty garbled memories. And they are far more like inventions, stories to explain realities that were no longer part of living memories, as I said, to explain ruins or rituals that perhaps had lasted for centuries and the origins of these rituals had been forgotten. We know that people in the Bronze Age, Minoan people, were very fond of taking votives, having parties on top of mountains, and they brought with them votives to give to their deities. Perhaps people even after the collapse of Minoan civilization continued to walk up mountains and take votaries, but people couldn't remember exactly why or they decided to change deities. Some form of sacrality attaches itself to certain localities

and people continue to use these places for their rituals. If you think, for example, the Athenian Acropolis, the temple of Athena was a mosque and a Christian temple for longer than it ever was, a Greek temple dedicated to Athena. In Sicily, in Syracuse, one of the most important churches of Syracuse was built using an old Greek temple. There is a form of sacrality that attaches itself to certain places and people continue to use them to venerate these places, but they change the divinities that are venerated there.

But there is something about the sacrality of the place. And there is something that people remembered about Knossos or Knossossos as I prefer to say. Probably ruins of the great Minoan palace stood there for centuries, even after it was abandoned, destroyed and then abandoned. And people attached wonderful stories to these ruins, like the stories of King Minos and the Minotaur and the Labyrinth and so on and so forth. When the sacred is defiled, darkness awakens. Don't miss the new bone-chilling psychological

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election year. We're going to hear a lot of this is America. No, no, you're all wrong. This is America. But on American History Hit, we're leaving that to the rest of them. Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week, where we look to the past to understand the United States of today with the help of some amazing guests. Let us introduce you to the founding fathers, guide you through the West wing of the White House and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by to find out just how we got here. American History Hit, a podcast from I've got in my notes that, I mean, of course we think of the palaces when you get to the Minoans, but I don't think those appear straight away. So do we have an idea what these earliest Minoan societies look like? Should we just be imagining small farming settlements dotted

around the place? Yes and no. In the sense that, yes, certainly, at first even the great site of Knossos was just like, almost like a migrant camp. It was tiny. But then population grew and And yes, we have lots of small settlements, settlements of perhaps one hectare or even less two hectares, where perhaps only five or six families live. But then we also get at some point in the middle of the third millennium, even larger settlements, settlements where the population was probably reaching already perhaps 1,000, 1,500 people. But also throughout the history of Minoan Crete, and also in later periods, you have a combination of different types of settlements, smaller places, larger places. But already, even before the construction of the palaces, there seemed to have been some places

that were more larger than others, where people were already attracting larger populations. And one of them was Knossos. And people always have to remember that palaces are not isolated buildings, as indeed Buckingham Palace is not an isolated building. It's bang in the centre of a thriving city of London. The same with Minorn Palaces. They're not isolated buildings. They emerge within larger settlements. So the foodstuffs that they would have, so I'm guessing crops, pastures for animals, is it like sheep and cows maybe?

Sheep, goats, the bobbles. Sheep and goats, bobbles. Cattle a bit less, but there is also cattle. Because that's what the kind of environment can sustain better. For cattle, you need quite a lot of water. There are areas of Crete where there is some water, but sheep and goat top. Toby, sheep and goat economy. Those Bronze Age Minoans, they loved it. Are olives and wine also big parts of the farming out there? Oh God, yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And already cultivated even before the Palaces. And we can see that also very, very well

when you take cores inside the soil of Crete, the spike in the pollen from olives and vines that you get in the third millennium, it's already something quite remarkable. Are you wondering whether they were already having a lot of drink? Yes, I'm sure they did. Mason- So the Cretans were growing wine and olives by some 5,000 years ago. That's insane. Nico, let's go on to those settlements that you've already highlighted. You mentioned different sizes of settlements even during the third millennium BC and those bigger places like Knossos.

How do we then get to the next level with the emergence of palaces? Do we know much about the appearance of palaces? It's a million dollar question in a sense. I mean, people have been debating exactly what led to this next step forever and ever. I mean, since Sir Arthur Evans and why do we have the emergence of palaces on the island of Crete and not, for example, in mainland Greece, where we have similar developments. There is something that happens towards the end of the third millennium BC and possible there may be some evidence of some big droughts affecting part of the eastern Mediterranean, possibly even elements of warfare, possibly even elements of warfare and some people managed to react to adversity in different ways. And one way in which perhaps the people on Crete reacted to some form of adversity was to create more complex society, more bureaucracy. There is also the fact that already throughout the third millennium, Crete had very close contact with very complex societies like Egyptian society.

And for example, it is very likely that the Minoans got the idea of using writing for bureaucracy, seals, seal impressions, to control the movements of goods or to lock rooms that stored particular goods. They got possibly some of these ideas from Egyptians or other contemporary societies with whom they were already in contact because, you know, earlier we were talking about migrations. In addition to migrations and people think of mass movements of populations, but there are even smaller migrations that happen because of trade routes and trade

links and sometimes for marriage purposes. And we have evidence that Menoncrete was in contact with all kinds of other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt in particular, already from the final Neolithic and from the third millennium BC. So it's, I think, another reason why perhaps certain things may have happened on Crete before they happened in other places, because somebody got the idea of using bureaucracy, extracting more taxes from their neighbours, exploiting other people from nearby civilizations that had already developed this kind of social organisation, more complex. Mason. Exactly. New social organisation ideas could come from those trade routes, which

is a really good point to highlight there, Nico. Nino. I'd like people always to think of, say, what happens, for example, in the UK, when the Romans arrive here, big changes, you know, the Romans didn't stay here very long. I think it was too cold. I'm joking. But even simply the contacts with other civilizations, more complex organizations, sometimes can bring other changes in neighbouring countries, even if they're not necessarily conquered. Mason- Well, you certainly do see that, Nico, in Britain before the Romans arrived. The elites in the South and East wanting to get access to Roman wine and starting their new practices based on it. You do see that influence, so it's interesting to speculate whether

that neighbouring power influence from Egypt or somewhere did influence the creation of the idea of palaces and so on. With these palaces, I'm sure they evolve over the hundreds of years, Nico, but just how monumental and complex did they become in their design? What do we think were the functions of these massive buildings? Laeva That's exactly another million dollar question. I mean, we have clear evidence of what some of the rooms in the palaces were used for, because some rooms were clearly used for storage of products. We know that other rooms had more ceremonial function.

Other rooms had perhaps ritual functions, like little shrines. In terms of monumentality, well, I can imagine that the palace of Knossos or Knossos is built around a central court, which is about 50 metres long. Now, isn't that about like a football pitch or perhaps a bit smaller than a football pitch? Don't test me, yes. No, exactly. I don't know. No, I think it's smaller than a football pitch, but, you know,

50 metres, 50 yards, it's a long rectangular square. And this is built around this. There are hundreds of rooms. There are clearly at least two floors in part of this construction because we find remains of stairs and so on. So there are vast structures, okay, not as large as Buckingham Palace, but for those periods, there are large structures that are obviously controlled by the elite

of Minoan society. But whether this elite was a kind of monarchical system, as the myth of King Minos would imply, or more like a corporate group, a kind of theocracy. These are speculation. One thing that is clear, and it's very peculiar about the Minoans, is that the iconography of the elite and the iconography of the rulers and the difference between elites and priesthood is very difficult to distinguish. And sometimes even you can't tell whether something that is being depicted is necessarily a deity or a priestess or a priest representative of that deity, or whether this could be a member of the elite. In other contemporary societies it's easier to understand, also because we have the help of inscriptions. But it is something peculiar about Minoan Crete that there doesn't seem to be the elevation of one person, particularly above others, or if there is, it's not so clearly visible.

And also for lots and lots of centuries, especially until the mid of the second millennium BC, a lot of the tombs are communal tombs, like family or clan vaults used over centuries with dozens of burials inside. And again, that doesn't seem to be specific burials that are elevated above others. And that has been interpreted by some people as showing that perhaps this was a slightly more egalitarian society, or at least that it was not so hierarchical as in later periods where you have a supreme ruler. But as I said, we perhaps it was simply people simply chose not to show this in their iconography. So do we think then that there were other purposes to these palaces right from the beginning? Do we

think it maybe is administration centers, you know, as the societies get more complex and centers of community? Do we get any of those sorts of ideas from palaces? Absolutely. As I said, there is a storage function illustrated by the storage rooms we have, an administrative function illustrated by the tablets, the seal impressions that people use. If literacy is not very widespread, how can you explain to people that they shouldn't enter a particular room or that certain goods are meant for somebody else one way of showing this is by using seals. And see impressions which was still used in the modern world sometimes and there are religious functions. I mean there are rooms that seem to be devoted to some kind of cult.

Some of the frescoes that are painted on some of these rooms seem to indicate that there were some ceremonies taking place in the near, inside, outside the palaces. What would these ceremonies mean? Clearly, some of these ceremonies must have had some kind of religious function. Hello, this is Will Liu from the Hello and Welcome podcast, and Google Pixel just sent me their latest phone in the Google Pixel 9. So I've been using Pixels for a long time now, dating back to the Pixel 2, but Google

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In case you haven't heard, in the US it's a presidential election year. We're going to hear a lot of, this is America. No, no, you're all wrong. This is America. But on American history hit, we're leaving that to the rest of them. Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week, where we look to the past to understand the United States of today with the help of some amazing guests. Let us introduce you to the Founding Fathers, guide you through the West Wing of the White House, and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by to find out just how we got on. Do we then get a sense of time Niko, over time with the palaces, as the Minoan period progresses, just one more question on the palaces and the social hierarchy before we move on. Do we then get a sense as time goes on that

there is a more clear social hierarchy and you do get almost rulers at the top? Because I've got in my notes a name like the Wanaks and figures like that. So does it become more clear that there was almost a king-like figure who resided in these palaces as time went on? C.P. Yes. At some point, you mentioned the figure of the Wanaka. We know about this figure because the name appears in the Linear B tablets. We can read read the linear B tablets because they're written in Greek, even if sometimes they contain words that are not Greek, like indeed, Wanaka. I mean, it's a word that probably comes from Minoan, but it's transferred to Greek because the word Wanaka then becomes later Greek, Anax, a word that we find in classical Greek.

We find it in Homer, for example, in Homer, though has already changed slightly its meaning. And so sure, by the time we have an administration on the island of creed that uses linear be instead of linear a there is clear evidence then. That there is a more even more hierarchical structure and that there is a figure that it's the first. the first i would say not even the first amongst equal pretty much in the party is the latin expression first among equal it's a bit more than the first among equal. It's a figure that has also religious function and some people have suggested that perhaps this is the equivalent of a king and monarch and monarch that not only has religious function but some people believe also was believed to be a bit. Divine a bit like fair hours in egypt but there is no great clear agreement on this but linear be tablets date to, let's say, from about 1450, 1400 BC. And it's a period when, according to many scholars, there is a switch that is Greek speaking Mycenaeans have taken over the administration of Crete. And they're based mostly at Knossos. So we have not a change

in population. We don't have necessarily a massive migration of people from mainland Greece, but some people who decided to change the administrative language from the language used by the Minoans to Greek. Some people would like even to think that the Minoans decided to change the language of their administration. But I personally don't buy it. Masonic But that point seems to suggest, Nico, if the palaces emerged several centuries before the arrival of Linear B and this Mycenaean outdoor influence, the actual local Minoan rulers beforehand, how they used the palace is potentially very different with the arrival of these Mycenaean people.

LW. Yes, because also we know, for example, that words change meaning, especially when they move from one language to another. And even if the term Wanaka, Vanax, that you brought up, because we can read the Linear B tablets, can be interpreted as a kind of kingship, is often translated as king, that doesn't necessarily mean that it had the same meaning in a Minoan context. In Homer, for example, the term warnax, warnaca, has already changed meaning. And the top dogs in the Iliad and the Odyssey are usually called basileus. And that is again the term that is normally translated as king. The term basileus already appears in Linear B, but it does not indicate the top dog.

It's just minor local ruler, somehow associated with metal work. So already between say the linear B tablets and Homer, 700 years difference, let's say, the term Basileus has changed meaning. So who knows? I believe that probably both terms Wanaka, Basileus, originate from Minoan Crete, because they're not Indo-European terms, words. They don't seem to have an Indo-European origin,

so it's a language that seems different from Greek. But what was their actual meaning in Minoan Crete? We just don't know. Mason. So it seems like there's a lot of mystery regarding the hierarchy early on in the story of the Minoans, especially before you get the arrival of Linear B and the function of the palaces and so on. Very briefly, before we go on to connections, what are the main cities, do we think are the main settlements in Minoan Crete? Let's say in the second millennium BC, we've got Knossos already, but should we be imagining if there are quite a few palaces around, almost like little independent polities on the large island of Crete? Cetia Yes. Whether they are independent polities

all the time, again, it's another vexed question. Let's say in the first half of the second millennium, we have palaces, important palaces, not just at Knossos, but also Festos, Malia, for example, and then some of these palaces are destroyed. Some of these palaces and also other settlements seem to be destroyed, and some of the destructions are due to earthquakes, some seem to be due to fire and so on. And then they are built anew. And at some point, some people think that Knossos probably starts getting the upper hand. When exactly this happens, again, it's

a matter of speculation and not everybody agrees. Then we also have palaces, you know, in the mid-second millennium, we also have the constructions of small palaces. We have big, big palaces with central court at Malia, Festos, Knossos, Zagro, but also we have smaller palaces, even in places that are only an hour drive from cross all states one at a place called galatas, many pounds one of the big mister is is that we have a really big settlement in east creek near a palace on the far east of the island, beautiful place, wonderful place to go swimming too, by the way, is Cato Sacro. And very near it, there is a huge settlement called Palecastro. And this is a really large settlement, and people have been digging there since 1902, but it doesn't seem to have a palace. Either people have been digging in the wrong place, or this was a mega site that didn't have a palace.

Mason- Do we know much then, Nico, about the Minoans and their wider connections with the Mediterranean world? If the people are, first of all, venturing to Crete, you know, thousands of years ago, they must surely have quite wide ranging connections by the time of the Minoans in the Bronze Age. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mentioned their contacts with the Egyptians. You know, we have finds of Egyptian things on Crete starting already in the third millennium and vice versa. We have things from Minoan Crete in Egypt, ditto for other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean from Syria, the regions that we now called the Levant,

Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus. Again, we have objects from this area that were found on Crete and vice versa. We even have for certain periods frescoes produced in Minoan style found in Egypt, in Syria, in what is modern day Israel. Isn't that amazing? So were they people exchanging not just goods, but also perhaps craftsmen, as people did in the Renaissance? You know, sometimes people in various courts of Renaissance Europe exchanged really good craftsmen or really good craftsmen sought the patronage of different people around the different courts of Europe.

Mason It does seem that there's quite a bit of movement isn't there of people? These trade routes, these connections that the Minoan Cretans had in the third, second millenniums BC, it allowed the exchanging of goods, importing, exporting, but also of ideas too. Ideas? People? We only have proxies. They must have exchanged things like foodstuff.

They must have exchanged things that don't survive, but we have the containers, the clay containers that were exchanged. Yes, they exchanged ideas because for example, we know that there are certain Egyptian divinities, you know, the Minoan artisans, they start changing them to suit more local tastes. So absolutely change of ideas. And let's not forget ideas don't have legs. Ideas are exchanged through people traveling around. And we should never think that because we are talking of 5,000 years ago that people were not moving around.

We've largely covered in our episode today, the story of the early Minoans, their origins, their rise, and we haven't really covered the end. I feel that will all be in another episode, writing, religion, and so on. I think the last thing that I'd like to ask before we wrap up is keeping on that trade thing a bit more. Purple dye, how important is the maritime world and things like purple dye to the Minoans? I want to ask this as the last question before we finish. Well, it was certainly important because you find remains of purple dye productions at many archaeological sites on Crete. I can't think off the top of my head head to be 100% honest, if they have already found evidence

for purple dye production as early as the third millennium. But certainly in the second millennium, there is plenty of evidence. And sometimes linked to small islands, also around the island of Crete. Some American colleagues have excavated one of these areas where they, you know, a little settlement on a small island off the coast of South Crete that seemed to have been a settlement used exclusively for this purpose,

for extracting purple dye. The last time I worked on an excavation on Crete was at the site of Palencastro and there too we found a huge pile of shells because purple comes from this poor animal that lives inside the shell. Toby So these are the Murek shells, so that's good to clarify isn't it? The purple dye is extracted from this shelled- Lucea From the animal. Yes. On seashores.

You don't want to be near purple shell production. It really stinks. A colleague of mine decided to do some experimental archaeology and extracted a number of these poor animals from their shells and let them macerate. And the stink. I don't think I've ever smelled anything as bad as that. the third millennium, with the second millennium BC, before the arrival of the Mycenaeans, with the archaeology that you have, there's still so much more to piece together, as mentioned at the start. It's still very mysterious and it feels like there's a lot more to talk about and a lot more to speculate about. But we've made a start. Cicero And people always think that although

people have excavated Knossos since 1900, they found everything. It's just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that can be excavated anywhere on Crete. There we go. Nico, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. No problem. Lovely to talk to you as usual. Thank you. Lovely to talk to you as usual. Thank you. Well, there you go. There was Professor Nicoletta Mamigliano giving you an introduction to the Minoans and how they rose to prominence more than 3,500 years ago. As mentioned right at the beginning, we realised quickly when doing this episode that we needed more than one episode to do the Minoans justice, to cover their entire story. So don't you worry, we'll be doing more Minoan episodes in the future where we explore more of the marvels and mysteries of the Minoans. Stay tuned for those. Thank you for listening to

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