When was crete discovered

Boyd uncovered dozens of houses, cobbled streets, a small palace, a cemetery, and countless bronze tools and weapons, stone and clay vessels, and personal and religious artifacts. But she had only three seasons at the site, and the turn of the twentieth century was still early days in the development of modern archaeological methods.

After marrying archaeologist Charles Henry Hawes in and publishing her fieldwork in , Boyd Hawes left Gournia, and thereafter it would be only sporadically, and rather lightly, reexamined. In , when Vance Watrous of the University of Buffalo and his team began new excavations at Gournia more than a century after Boyd ended hers, there was, he believed, still a great deal to be uncovered.

The team is also doing a complete architectural survey led by Field Director D. Matthew Buell of Trent University and John McEnroe of Hamilton College, and creating an entirely new site map with each wall redrawn using technologies not available to Boyd a century ago.

Of all the sites in the prehistoric Aegean, Gournia gives the best idea of what a Minoan town looked like, which Harriet Boyd understood after just three years of working there. Between and , Watrous and a yearly team of more than a hundred have added greatly to the picture of Gournia as a thriving urban center going back at least as far as the Protopalatial period — B.

On the north edge of the site, the team has found evidence of intensive industrial activity alongside domestic spaces. According to Watrous, a normal Minoan family home would have had four to five pithoi large storage jars filled with food to survive a year, but at Gournia few of the houses had pithoi at all, suggesting that inhabitants were bartering for their food in exchange for the goods they manufactured there. At one location on the north edge of the settlement, Buell points out an area of burned bedrock inside a space identified as a foundry.

In another room, in a phase dating to the Neopalatial period, Younger found 15 intact pots sitting upright on some benches, and in another room he found four large jars with numerous smaller pots inside. Perhaps the other most significant area the team has excavated and in some places re-excavated was the space that Boyd had identified as the Neopalatial palace. On the north facade the walls were built using the masonry technique known as Cyclopean, in which the stones are unfinished, and, consist of white boulders that may have been visible at a distance to visitors to Gournia coming from the sea.

On the western side, however, facing the courtyard, the sandstone blocks are of well-finished ashlar masonry, a more refined technique, and one likely intended to impress those coming to congregate in the palace itself, explains Buell.

In one room the team found more than conical cups in two different deposits. The additional presence of pumice in some vessels suggests a ritual in response to the catastrophic eruption of the Thera volcano on the island of Santorini some miles away.

Both Boyd and Watrous excavated many seals—clay nodules that were impressed by engraved gemstones to authenticate them—and both the tablet and the seals suggest a palatial system of administration. Boyd had also found a clay disk called a roundel bearing a short inscription in the Linear A script.

Several structures originally explored by Boyd but about which she never published are the Minoan buildings she located on the north coast of Mirabello Bay, about yards north of the site. The Roman occupation came in 69 AC and lasted until AC, followed by the Byzantine era during which the wealth of Crete is still visible in the beautiful mosaic floor of the basilicas that were built during these times.

Crete later fell under the domination of the Arabs, in , and stayed under it for years. During those years the city of Heraklion was founded, first called Handak. During the early Byzantine years, several churches and structures were constructed. In , the Venetians founded newly fortified cities and conquered the island of Crete. They fortified the old castles built by the Arabs and built new castles.

The old towns of Rethymno and Chania remain intact since the Renaissance, with their beautifully decorated squares, the superb fountains and its fine churches and palaces.

During those years, the arts flourished such as painting and literature. The famous painter El Greco Domenicos Theotocopoulos started his carrier in this period and other artists and scholars from Constantinople came to Crete. In , the island fell under the Ottoman rule which lasted until , when the great statesman of Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos , negotiated the independence of Crete. Crete was declared an autonomous state and, in , it was united with the independent Greek State.

This period gave birth to one of the most talented writers of Greece, Nikos Kazantzakis Many organizations were also founded for the education of people and schools and libraries were built. The resistance that the Germans encountered caught them completely off guard. Eventually, all Crete fell under German occupation. Many of the local residents were executed for their participation in the Resistance War against the German invasion and many villages were massacred.

But the war was continuing and from the southern suburbs of Crete, ships would secretly come at night to board people to Egypt, so that they could continue the war against the Germans from there.

Today Crete is a large island that gets most of its income from agriculture, cattle breeding, and tourism. Although there are tourist places all over the island, the inhabitants still keep their old traditions and customs. In fact, tradition is very important for them even in their everyday life. Deciphered in the s, Linear B is recognized as the oldest known Greek dialect. The Minoans also maintained trading relationships with Egypt, Syria, and the Greek mainland.

Their trade routes may have extended as far west as Italy and Sicily. Certain locations had especially close ties with Crete and its sailors. The city of Akrotiri on the island of Thera modern-day Santorini is one of the best preserved of these Minoan settlements. A volcanic eruption around the 16th century B. Its walls boasted stunning murals of brightly colored, stylized images of sparring boxers, climbing monkeys, swimming dolphins, and flying birds.

The quality of the paintings uncovered at Akrotiri suggests that artists either from Crete or influenced by its culture had set up workshops in this city. Other Aegean settlements bearing clear evidence of Minoan influence include the Cycladi islands of Melos and Kea, and islands in the Dodecanese, such as Rhodes. The settlement of Kastri, on the island of Cythera, south of the Peloponnesian peninsula of the Greek mainland, is another example of Cretan cultural power. Built to exploit the local stocks of murex—a mollusk highly prized for its purple ink used for dyeing cloth—Kastri is purely Minoan in its urban planning.

But even this town was not a colony. There is no evidence that these places were politically subject to Crete, as it is not believed that they paid any kind of tribute beyond the money exchanged when trading goods. Minoan civilization declined by the late 15th century B. One theory is that the volcanic eruption on Thera damaged other cities along Minoan trade routes, which hurt Crete economically.

Taking all the evidence available, the volcano did not directly affect life on Crete—about 70 miles to the south. No damage from the eruption has been found there. Four times more powerful than the devastating Krakatoa volcanic eruption of , the volcano on Thera modern-day Santorini exploded around the 16th century B.

It buried cities, killing thousands, and—some say—led to the collapse of Crete. Stories of the Minoan decline are believed to have morphed into the legend of Atlantis as described by the Greek philosopher Plato circa B. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of an invasion in the midth century B. Many sites, including several large palaces in central and southern Crete were burned, and many settlements were abandoned shortly thereafter. Despite its abrupt ending, the influence of Crete survived.

Its vibrant culture made a major impact on the rising new regional power: the Mycenaean Greeks, who lauded King Minos and Crete in their mythology. Linear B, the Cretan writing system adopted by the Mycenaeans, would be the basis for the Greek in which the poet Homer would write his two masterpieces. All rights reserved.

Minoan art featured distinctive depictions of female forms—both divine and mortal. Perhaps the most famous is the Snake Goddess which dates to the 18th to 16th centuries B.

Atlantis Origins? Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. The colossal eruption on Thera Santorini in a 19th-century engraving, which occurred around the 16th century B.

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