The Minoan Civilization

It’s only a small island – some 200 kilometres long and between 12 and 58 kilometres wide – but Crete, in the Aegean Sea, lies at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe. There, in 1900, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans began excavating some ancient ruins near the island’s present capital of Heraklion. What he found, and what has been discovered in subsequent excavations, has given shape to what we know today as the Minoan civilization.

Tribes of hunter-gatherers may have found their way to Crete as early as 125,000 years ago when, at the end of the Illinoian Ice Age, they left North Africa for the first time – only to be killed off or forced back to Africa by a subsequent ice age some 50,000 years later. Genetic evidence (i.e. the Y-chromosome groupings that define patrilineal descent), however, clearly indicates that contemporary inhabitants of Crete, like those of mainland Greece, came c. 7000 BCE from Anatolia (or what today is Turkey) and settled in fishing villages along the coast and farming villages on the fertile Mesara Plain.

Like all the great Bronze Age civilizations, the Minoan civilization emerged in the middle of the 4th millennium BCE through a process of urbanization of these early Neolithic communities. By 2700 BCE it had become an important centre of Aegean civilization that flourished for well over a thousand years. During their hey-day, they evolved a highly organised society, developed a distinctive written language, religion, and culture, and maintained an extensive mercantile trade with their Mediterranean neighbours. The skill of Minoan artists and metalworkers was renowned in the ancient world. Durable objects of Minoan manufacture – beautifully painted ceramics and exquisite jewellery made from copper, bronze, silver, and gold – have been found on mainland Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and as far west as the coast of Spain.

The growth of several cities into major centres of commerce tended to accentuate class differences, eventually giving rise (c. 2000 BCE) to the emergence of kings, a dynastic power structure, and the construction of palaces throughout the island. Despite this, the Minoans seem to have maintained an equitable distribution of wealth. Multi-room homes, many two or three stories high, constructed of stone, wood, and mud-brick, are in evidence even in the “poor” sections of town. The cities themselves were connected by roads paved with stone slabs cut from large blocks, and a system of clay pipes provided water and sewer facilities to the upper class.

Unlike other Bronze Age civilizations, Minoan society was matrilineal (i.e. descent was traced through the female line) and women retained at least as much power as men. Bare-breasted, they dressed in a short-sleeved robe open to the navel, while the men wore loincloths and kilts. Farmers raised cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats, domesticated bees, and grew an assortment of grains as well as grapes, figs, and olives. Like the Sumerian and Egyptian temples, the Minoan palaces were more than centres of government and worship; they were storage facilities for the harvested produce. Augmented with the meat of wild deer and boar roaming the island, it all added up to a very healthy diet, a comfortable lifestyle, and a growing population.

Two distinctive features of Minoan life are especially noteworthy. The first is their apparent peacefulness. In his early excavations, Sir Arthur Evans found little evidence of ancient fortifications and coined the phrase pax Minoica or “Minoan peace.” Although subsequent scholars have challenged that idea, a recent (1998) conference of Minoan archaeologists in Belgium concluded that any evidence of armed conflict remains scanty. The superbly crafted Minoan swords seem more associated with fashion and ritual than with aggression. No evidence exists for a Minoan army, and few signs of warfare appear in their art. The inter-city strife and later expansionist aggression that characterised other contemporary civilizations seems entirely absent on the island of Crete.

A second and perhaps related feature that distinguishes Minoan culture is the persistence of the Mother Goddess at the heart of their religious worldview. In all other civilizations, the process of urbanization brought with it dramatic changes in social relations and in the supporting mythology. Urban cultures are typically organised around class rather than kinship. The excess of produce in agricultural societies leads inevitably to economic disparity and an accompanying social inequality. It also issues in a burgeoning population that requires an increasing level of governmental control. Because the agricultural wealth is both generated and defended primarily by male muscle power, the class distinctions are accompanied by a growing gender inequality, with men assigning to themselves the public roles of priests, kings, administrators, and military leaders who together control the society’s wealth. Such dramatic social changes are then reflected in, and supported by, changes in the society’s accompanying mythology and religious beliefs. The new male dominance requires a shift away from a nature-based matriarchal religion focused on the Mother Goddess towards a male-centred universe, governed by a testosterone-laced hierarchy of increasingly male deities ruled by one transcendent Father God.

Just why, of all the civilization, the Minoans should have bucked this trend remains a mystery. Although they certainly evolved a class-based society, there seems to have been little economic disparity between the classes and no inequality between men and women. The palace kings were always male, but women occupied all other important roles in public life and had a virtual monopoly on the priesthood. They even participated as equal participants in the popular sports of boxing and bull jumping. The latter was a highly dangerous sport in which a bull would charge headlong into a line of jumpers who, in order to survive, would grab the bull by the horns, somersault over it, and land on their feet behind the bull. Clearly, Minoan women had not been reduced to the status of the weaker sex.

Since we have only excavated remnants from Minoan culture, we can only guess at the beliefs and practices that comprised their rich religious life. What we can be sure of is that it was matriarchal – i.e. a goddess religion presided over by priestesses  – and probably polytheistic. Three goddesses in particular have been identified, but whether they are separate deities or different aspects of a single Mother Goddess remains unclear. The first of these, known as “Mistress of the Animals,” later became the “Mountain Mother”. Accompanied by a saluting male, she was depicted as standing astride a high hill, protecting the animals and natural world. Another was the “Snake Goddess”, depicted with snakes entwined around her arms and body and worshiped in private homes as a kind of domestic mother goddess. A third form, found on a number of seals, appears to be a “Goddess of Vegetation.” A few more diminutive figures have been found that may or may not depict male deities. If so, they hold positions of little significance alongside their female counterparts.

The Minoan goddesses seem to represent a deification of the natural world with which humans could live in harmony. The entire world for the Minoans was suffused with the divine. And like most mother-child relationships, the connection of the Mother Goddess to the natural and human worlds was closer and more biological than that of the more distant male deities of other cultures. Like the Minoan women themselves, however, the Mother Goddess was far from a purely benign presence. Worshiped in an often exuberant fashion with music and dance in outdoor shrines – some in sacred caves, others in hill-top sanctuaries – the Goddess also demanded sacrifice. Judging from bones found at their religious sites, these were mostly of deer, oxen, and goats. A bull, of great importance in Minoan culture, would also be sacrificed at special festivals.

Still more sinister finds suggest that human sacrifice was also practiced. One sanctuary gave up the skeleton of an 18-year-old male, trussed in a fashion similar to that of a sacrificial bull, who had apparently been slain with a nearby bronze dagger and allowed to bleed to death. At another site, the remains of four children, aged between 8 and 12, and apparently in perfect health at the time of their death, have been found. The evidence indicates that they were butchered, cooked together with other edible substances, and cannibalised. Is it possible that such ritualised aggression is the price that must be paid to maintain the peace in other sectors?

However prosperous and peaceful, if sometimes bizarre, Minoan life may have been under the motherly providence of the Goddess, it was not entirely a bed of roses. About 1700 BCE, the palaces that had been built throughout the island were abruptly and utterly destroyed – probably by a powerful earthquake, though possibly by invaders from Anatolia.  With astonishing resilience, however, the Minoans quickly rebuilt them into even more spectacular structures – the so-called “great palaces” at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Zakros, alongside many smaller palaces that ranged across the Cretan landscape.

Then, during this same period, in 1645 BCE, there was a colossal volcanic eruption on the Aegean island of Thera or Santorini. Whether or not Minoan crops and animals were suffocated by volcanic ash is unknown, but the tsunamis and earthquakes associated with the eruption would almost certainly have caused extensive damage to the Minoan mercantile fleet and infrastructure. Some 200 years later, the Minoan civilization began its final decline towards extinction. About 1450 BCE, due perhaps to another earthquake or eruption of the Thera volcano, all the important palaces except Knossos were again destroyed. Finally, in 1420 BCE, it was “game over”. A Mycenaean army from mainland Greece invaded Crete, occupied the palace sites, and subjugated the Minoan people.

The male deities that everywhere were transforming these great Bronze Age civilizations into warmongering empires had finally won the day.