Ancient Man and His First Civilizations

Minoan-2

Greece

The Pelasgians

The name Pelasgians, was used by ancient Greek writers to refer to populations that preceded the White Hellenes in Greece. During the classical period, enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete and other regions of the Aegean. Populations identified as "Pelasgian" spoke a language that at the time, Greeks identified as not Greek. A tradition also survived that large parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. Archaeological excavations during the 20th century have unearthed artifacts in areas traditionally inhabited by the Pelasgians, like Thessaly and Attica and Lemnos. Archaeologists excavating at Sesklo and Dimini have described Pelasgian material culture as Neolithic.

Since next to nothing is known about the Pelasgians, The question of who built Mycenae (The first great city on mainland Greece), looms large. According to the White Greeks (the Hellenes) myth of Danaus, the building of Mycenae was a collaborative effort between Crete and Egypt. But since Mycenae was build at about 2,000 B.C, almost one thousand years before the Hellenes arrived in Greece, there can be no confidence that the hellenic myth has any factual basis.

But whether the Pelasgians, or the Cretans and Egyptians built it, Mycenae was described as "broad-streeted and golden". And it became the capital of a civilization that encompassed most of the Greek mainland and the Aegean Islands. The term Mycenaean is also sometimes used for the later civilizations of the Aegean area as a whole.

Mainland Greece maintained contacts with Crete, and a rich culture, based on the Late Minoan, rapidly came into being. However the Mycenaean’s gained control of Crete at about 1450 B.C, and between 1,375 and 1,200 B.C, they became masters of an empire that stretched from Sicily and southern Italy in the west to Asia Minor and the Levant coast in the east.

The Mycenaean's seem to have had more of a taste for monumental sculpture than had their Minoan mentors. Of the few surviving examples, the best known is a relief "the Lion Gate" at Mycenae (c. 1250 B.C), in which two lions confront each other across an architectural column.

Crete

On Crete, the six-story palace complex in the capital of Knossos, probably originated the later Greek myths of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur (half man, half bull). However the labyrinth wasn’t under the palace, the labyrinth WAS the palace. Whatever the palace's function, the building itself was enormous. It contained hundreds of rooms at many levels, grouped around a central courtyard. The palace had storerooms, bathrooms, private apartments, public rooms, workshops and even what appears to be a throne room.

The labyrinth

Some of these storerooms contained dozens of huge jars, called pithoi, which were used to store olive oil. According to some estimates, 60,000 gallons of olive oil could be put in these, which is also a testament to the Minoan's wealth. While there is no archaeological evidence of a labyrinth, the palace itself, must have seemed like a maze of corridors, staircases and rooms, to the new arrivals from the Central Asian plains. This is probably where the legend of the labyrinth began.