Minoan civilization

Discuss this intriguing bronz age culture, their way of life, their religion, their day to day life and everythin that made them such an interesting and fascinating people.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=M_azCIe_0Kk
cliojournal.wikispaces.com/Minoan Religion and the Ancient Greeks
arthistoryresources.net/snakegoddess/minoanwomen.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Posting obligatory qt's

GROSS MATRIARCHAL SOFTIES

SEE IT VERY EASILY IN THEIR GROTESQUE AND VULGAR ART.

GLAD THEY WERE DESTROYED BY ARYAN PIRATES!

Only popular because of meme boob dresses

youtube.com/watch?v=M_azCIe_0Kk

you can also go back to >>>>>/r9k? if you want, but i guess between returning to that cesspit and suicide, killing yourself is the merciful option.

cuck

>not enjoying based bronze age civilization.

i wonder why god destroyed their civilization with volcano

They were destroyed by earthquakes and volcanoes, not pirates.

CIVILIZATION IS CANCER

I LOVE THE BRONZE AGE, JUST NOT VULGAR AND GROSS CULTURES LIKE MINOANS, SUMERIANS, MYCENAEANS, EGYPTIANS ETC

ARYAN SUBJUGATORS, SUPREMACY OF THE NOMAD AND PIRATE!

you remind me of someone called AKOBADAGETH from a long time ago

> Not liking sipping wine in your decorated balcony while looking at the boats coming and going throught the port as they arrive from their many travels across the shiny blue sea. All the while some half naked qt3.14 plays the harp beside you and you feel the ocean breeze rustling through your face.

user why are you such a faggot.

MY RACE WAS CREATED TO TREK ACROSS EURASIA EITHER BY BOAT OR HORSE, TO SUBJUGATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU INTO LABORING FOR US AND TO KEKOLD THEM AS I EXPAND MY HAREM OF WAR BRIDES

CLASSICAL GREEKS WHO WERE OF MY PEOPLE, EVENTUALLY FELL BECAUSE THEY BECAME SEDENTARY GRAIN EATERS. TRULY GROSS!
I DON'T KNOW HIM

A couple questions:

1. Despite lack of written sources, could their language be Indo-European?

2. As the first civilization to appear in European soil, how did they influence the future civilizations of Europe? Specifically Ancient Greece.

3.Why did the women have their boobs hanging out?

1- We can't know for sure, as we can't translate their language atm.

2- Their art, architecture and building style later influenced the Myceneans and later the Classical Greeks.

3- Cultural thing, the same reason many cultures of the same time didn't cover their women's breasts (I.E Indus Valley Civilization and to a certain extent Egypt.)

...

>1. Despite lack of written sources, could their language be Indo-European?
No.

>2. As the first civilization to appear in European soil, how did they influence the future civilizations of Europe? Specifically Ancient Greece.
They hugely influenced the Mycenaeans, who were pretty much their cultural successors. But the Classical Greeks would not have been hugely influenced by their civilization because the Bronze Age Collapse completely destroyed the Mycenaeans, and with them the influence of the Minoans. The Classical Greeks basically rebuilt their civilization from scratch, even having to adopt Phoenician writing because Mycenaean script had been completely forgotten. Mycenaean and Minoan civilization were vaguely remembered in the Homeric epics and other Greek legends, but overall the Classical Greeks really owed more to the likes of the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Assyrians than to the Mycenaeans or Minoans.

I Heard somewhere that they inspired Plato's myth of Atlantis, how true is that statement?

One of you niggers needs to decipher Linear A.

It's not like you're going anything more important.

Come on already.

Having exposed tits is all well and good if the female is nubile and attractive, but would you really want to see the sagging tits of the elderly or the deformed tits of the uglies?

tiddies

let's post moar minoan qt3.14s alongside the discussion

They look Indian.

Nah they look like your average southern european to me, which is probably what they did really look like, considering that their closest genetic descendents are modern day Cretans.

Going back to the topic, are there any good books or documentaries about them?

Any good depiction of them in popular culture and media?

YEAH THE "GREEKS" YOU KNOW I.E. THE NORDIC ONES DID NOT COME UNTIL THE INVASION OF HYPERBOREAN PIRATES VIA. THEIR OUTPOST IN ATLANTIS

WE

How did cretin come to its current English-language meaning?

It's a false friend, it comes from the French Chretien, meaning Christian. There was a couple of villages of inbred fucks living in the alps, and they called themselves christians so people wouldn't hate them, I don't exactly remember

What is their relationship to the Nuragics? Where they the descendants of Neolithic farmers? What's their relationship to the people who built Göbelki Tepe? What's their relationship to the people who first domesticated cattle in Anatolia? What's their relationship to the people who first began farming in Anatolia? What was their relationship to the Etruscans?

>inb4 they had no relationship to these groups whatsoever

Neolithic famers are masterrace :P

They are descended from the same stock, sure, as are to an extent all european populations, but they aren't exactly all that closely related with ancient Sicilians and Anatolians either. The Minoans were closer to the myceneans and to a lesser extent to the classical greeks, as we know by DNA analyses that they were genetically closer to modern greeks (more specifically, to modern inhabitants of the cretan highlands) than they are to any modern people.

Yes, you can see from pic related that they were extremely close genetically.

The PCA analysis also highlights the high affinity of the Minoans to the current inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau as well as Greece. Among the top 10 nearest neighbours to our Minoan population sample, four are Greek populations and two of these from Lassithi prefecture (Fig. 5). The close relationship of the Minoans to modern Cretans is also apparent, when analysis is restricted to populations originating from Greece (Fig. 6b). Particularly in respect to the first PCA (capturing 92% of the variance of this particular subset of the data), the Minoans are extremely close to the modern Lassithi population, the populations from the islands of Chios and Euboea, as well as the populations of Argolis and Lakonia (Southern Greece ) (Fig. 6b). Thus, the modern inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau still carry the maternal genetic signatures of their ancient predecessors of the Minoan population.
It seems that there is (at least in terms of mtDNA) continuity in Crete since the Bronze Age, just as there is in Sardinia. And, indeed there appears to be some similarity between Bronze Age Sardinia and Minoan Crete (see Tables S5 and S6 of the supplement).

1. It's possible, but matching Linear A letters to their Linear B counterparts results in nothing immediately identifiable as Indo-European.

2. Art and architecture. Megarons, for example, are essentially Mycenaeanized adaptations of Minoan palatial buildings.
Also mythology. The Theseus cycle can be thought of in the context of Greek conquerors adapting to Minoan society. Some scholars would argue that many obscure Greek rituals trace their roots all the way back to the Minoan age.

3. #FreeTheNipple

WAZ

>Any good depiction of them in popular culture and media?
Nope, they're criminally unknown in the public consciousness. The most anyone knows about them is the minotaur story, and even that's already behind a thick greek lens.

That's an absolute shame, why won't anybody give the bronze age greek civilizations the light of day?

Moving alone, another question i've always had, were the minoans as peaceful as people claimed or is that just memes? I mean, i found an equal number of sources supporting both views ( warlike and peaceful.)

>you will never have a qt3.14 minoan waifu
Why live?

>why won't anybody give the bronze age greek civilizations the light of day?

What 'civilizations'? There were only two. The Mycenaean and the Minoan.

The Cyclades were hardly worthy of the title civilization. A few dozen or hundred people per island with no social stratification.

Mycenaeans get considerable attention but without more substantial Linear B findings it is hard to say much more about them. We know roughly their social/political makeup, a bit about their economy, and whatever geopolitical information can be gleamed from Hittite records and whatever cultural data is preserved in Homer.

Minoans we know nothing about except that they were apparently egalitarian, mostly peaceful, and used Egyptian artistic motifs (light skin for women, dark skin for men, very rigid human figures, similar skirt shapes).

The decipherment of Linear A would be the biggest thing to happen to history and archaeology in decades... but it doesn't appear very likely. Plus, we have such a small corpus that it except for language family, we probably wouldn't even learn anything.

>a few dozen per island

Are you legitimately retarded?

DANKY KANGZ

You forgot your usual trip, shouting retard.

>why won't anybody give the bronze age greek civilizations the light of day?

The Myceneans are very well studied, usually under their better-known name the Acheans. They were the protagonists of the Iliad and Odyssey, most of the best-known heroes were Acheans (Herakles, Achilles, Theseus, Perseus, etc etc) and most of what we think of as "Greek" mythology is, in fact, about the Acheans.

The Minoans are much less studied, because their language hasn't been deciphered. About the only thing experts are sure of is that they didn't speak any form of Greek. On the other hand, many elements of their culture were adopted by the Acheans, including several of their gods (most notably Zeus, Dionysos and Demeter).

>yfw Minos got literally got cucked by a BIG. WHITE. BULL.

>Moving alone, another question i've always had, were the minoans as peaceful as people claimed or is that just memes?

There is no evidence for fortifications on Crete during the entire ~2,000 years of Minoan rule, similarly no weapons have ever been found from this period on Crete, not even the arrowheads that are found almost everywhere. This all suggests that Crete itself was extremely peaceful, probably unified very early on. On the other hand, the Minoans controlled the seas around them and dominated the trade routes to Egypt and the Levant, so they can't have been pacifists. But there's little doubt that for the average Minoan living on Crete there was a quite exceptional lack of the kind of everyday violence other Bronze Age cultures engaged in.

There were Cycladic islands in the pre-Mycenaean bronze age with only dozens of inhabitants.

Cycladic peoples would island-hop for trading food and manufactured goods and marriage.

A few islands like Thera were massively settled, but the majority weren't.

>perky tits
Yeah right maybe up until she is 16 before her firstborn child.

>Zeus
The name and attributes of Zeus are all Indo-European there, lad. I don't know what you're talking about.

Also what evidence is there that Dionysos was Minoan?

And it's obvious that very small sialnds had a low population.

Ahh i see, thanks for the information, i'd imagined they'd have some sort of military navy to watch out the trade routes, even if they were indeed pacifists.

Now the question is, on one of the most war filled and brutal centuries of human existence, how did the Minoan civilization mantained peace for atleast 2000 years?

According to his enemies, sure. They were probably just confused by the Minoans Bull Cult, which is very evident in their art.

Speaking of the Labyrinth, it's name is from "Labrys", a word almost certainly of Minoan origin which signifies the ceremonial double-faced axes found across Crete, and which would have adorned the entrances to the Labyrinth (which means, "place of the twin-axe"). So effective was the Minoan bureucracy that the Greeks seem to have continued to rely on it to run the state, continuing to pay a special tithe to the "mistress of the Labyrinth", probably a deity but perhaps a priestess, who was in some way important to the Minoan administration.

Sure, but even the largest Cycladic islands didn't have more than a couple hundred.

Thera was a Minoan colony judging them the city (or cities?) uncovered there, and accordingly had a larger population.

The Cycladic people though were really bare-bones, salt of the earth people so far as we can tell. Like I said, no evidence for stratification exists at all in surviving floor plans or burials.

>Yfw the Minotaur is literally his wife's son

No evidence that Minoans were enemies of the Mycenaeans though.

They traded and co-habited peacefully for centuries before Thera wrecked Crete and the Mycenaeans took over.

All later Greek accounts of Minoans/Crete also demonstrate good relations except for Thesus, which was itself an Athenian fabrication and what parts of the story are original folklore and what parts are propaganda we don't know.

>No evidence that Minoans were enemies of the Mycenaeans though.

Yeah, apart from the fact that the Myceneans came and burned their cities to the ground.

Don't call me lad, faggot. Also the Greeks themselves maintained the tradition that Zeus was born on Crete, and nursed by the nymph of mount Dykte. Also note that King Minos was a son of Zeus, and the preservation on Crete of many tales and traditions of Zeus not known elsewhere, chiefly the belief that Zeus was not a god but a mortal. Yes the name is IE but it just means "the god", it's a title not a name.

cliojournal.wikispaces.com/Minoan Religion and the Ancient Greeks

For Dionysos, he was also a son of Zeus, he married Ariadne the daughter of Minos and "mistress of the Labyrinth", and again there are many archaic traditions of Dionysos on Crete, where he is mostly known by the name Zagreus.

>Now the question is, on one of the most war filled and brutal centuries of human existence, how did the Minoan civilization mantained peace for atleast 2000 years?

Thalassokratia. By ruling the seas, they had no need for a warrior class. On Crete, the artist and the merchant held places of honor while warriors are either absent or marginalised, since there are no depictions of them in Minoan art and no Minoan weapons beyond a few late ceremonial objects that look like weapons but couldn't actually have been used as such.

>All later Greek accounts of Minoans/Crete also demonstrate good relations except for Thesus, which was itself an Athenian fabrication and what parts of the story are original folklore and what parts are propaganda we don't know

You do realise that the whole tale of the Minotaur is purely Athenian, right?

How did "place of axe" degenerate to "place where you get lost"? Was the minotaur in a temple or something in the original myth?

Except that didn't happen

I hope you are kidding, faggot.

Zeus, like most originally Greek gods, was merged with the gods of the local inhabitants. Zeus is undeniably Indo-European in origin.

Just look at Aphrodite and Hellen of Troy. Hellen is suspected to have been the Goddess of Love of the pre-Greek people of the Peloponnese, which is why she was given a prominent place in mythology.

The aspects of Zeus preserved on Crete are not indicative of Zeus' Minoan origins, but rather represent Minoan holdovers merged into the new, dominant Zeus cult (for lack of a better term).

I'll say it's worth it. Would you advocate for world-wide burqa so we don't have to look at the face of ugly and old women?

The Labyrinths (there were several) were probably a combination of temple, palace and granary. They had very complex floorplans, visitors would have found them very maze-like.

Also, the Labyrinth of the Minotaur myth was specially built by Daedalus, and featured walls that moved on their own so that whichever way you tried to go, you wound up back at the center.

If you mean the colors, actually classic greece was full of them too.

Myth of the Minotaurus= Evokes the fact that the Minoan practiced human sacrifices.

Zeus was "Hellenised" by the Greeks just like Aphrodite (another Cretan goddess) but even the Greeks claimed his cult came from Crete, as do all the myths concerning his childhood. Really of all the gods who you might suspect Minoan origins for, Zeus is the most clear-cut example. The fact that he became the chief god of the Iron Age Greeks says nothing, compare how Yahweh went from a minor Canaanite war deity to chief god of 2 billion Abrahamics.

Not during the Palatial period they didn't. It's more like the myth of Exodus, it recalls a time when Crete dominated the Agean and could demand tribute from the mainland, just as Exodus recalls the time when Egypt dominated the Levant.

IIRC we have no evidence of that, and in fact, most of the data from the time points against it.

You are taking an incredibly limited view on Greek religion and the deities therein.

All Greek gods represent a syncretism of the new, Indo-European Greek gods and traditions, with the older pre-Greek and Minoan gods and traditions.

That you think Zeus is Minoan because a handful of traditions were practices only on Crete is evidence of either your utter backwards analysis or trolling.

Also about the Zeus talk, IIRC, weren't almost all minoan deities female? I mean there seem to be little evidence of male gods in their society.

I'm talking about the origins of the deity. What his cult became is a different matter, but just as Attis sprang from Anatolia, so did Zeus from Crete.

It's not clear. The so-called "Snake Goddess" figurines could just as well represent priestesses, and the general lack of obviously religious imagery rather suggests they didn't think it a fit subject for depiction, so the fact that there are no images of male deities may not reflect actual beliefs. Certainly a great many female deities entered Greek mythology from Crete, foremost of them Artemis and Athena.

You're talking nonsense.

Minaon not-Zeus and Greek Zeus merged. Zeus didn't originate on Crete and most of his cult is non-Minoan in nature.

So how "matriarchal" they actually were? Less patriarchal than classic greeks is not really proof of a matriarchy or an equalist society, pretty much all ancient mediterranean cultures were less patriarchal than classic greeks.

How come all those archaeologists etc are too retarded to realise that the depictions etc probably only show the upper classes, priestesses etc? I seriously fucking doubt your average woman walked about with her tits out in elaborate, expensive tops

>athena
>Minoan

You're going to have to start citing your outrageous claims here, buddy.

Pretty sure the actual archeologists mostly believe that nowadays and it's fanboys reading outdated stuff who believe every single woman in Crete walked with her tits out all day everyday.

It appears that women had considerable power over religious and state affairs, a lot more than any society at the time.

If this truly marks them as "matriarchal" idk, but women definately held significant power on their society.

It is pretty well known that exposed titties were mostly present on the noble and priestly class.

They do realize that.
You have to understand that everything you read or hear about Minoan Crete, including speculation about gods, is essentially fantasy.

The only accounts of Crete we have at Greek, Minoans and Crete are only mentioned like 6 times in the Iliad and non is cultural information.

All of this cult/goddess stuff is derived from a few names that they assume are present in undeciphered linear A.

We know about burial, material culture, architecture, and can gleam a bit about the economy. Everything else is speculation.

>A-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja (Mistress Athena) is referred to in the Knossos Linear B text V 2, cited by John Chadwick (Chadwick 1976; p. 88). (The full text refers to Athena, Enualios which is perhaps an early name for Ares, Paiawon which is perhaps an alternative name for Apollo,, and Poseidon.) This is the Mycenaean attempt to translate the name of the Minoan goddess, A-ta-no-dju-wa-ja. This name means Sun Goddess - the prefix atano is related to Luwian astanus = sun, and the final part is the Minoan spelling of what we know from Greek as Diwia (Mycenaean di-u-ja or di-wi-ja). The Mycenaeans even kept the Minoan word order at this early time; by the time of Homer, the name was Hellenized further, to Potni= Athenaie.

>citation needed

Seriously, what's with the boobs? Assuming that the pictures in this thread are at least partially accurate with regards to Minoan clothing, it seems like they were going out of their way to expose the boobs.

Boobs are good.

Probably some motiff associated with fertility or something.

Not all that unusual in many cultures even today.

Diwia is very close to dyeus, protogIndo-European form of Zeus.

Your own citation says Minoan form is derived from proto indo European luwian sun goddess.

Most indo European cultures had a sun goddess.

Greeks were indo european

>100% non Greek Minoan!

arthistoryresources.net/snakegoddess/minoanwomen.html

check the sauces if you feel like delving even deeper into this.

I mean indo european luwian not proto.

But anyways, you're arguing from a position which has no evidence except for 'possible' cognates of totally isolated words in an unreadable script.

I don't agree with my source's attempt to translate, it seems that if Minoan was some form of IE it would have been deciphered by now. My point was merely that Athena was a goddess taken over by the Acheans after they conquered Crete. And really, it's pretty hard to see any IE cognate for Athena beyond the use of her name by a Helladic polis.

>art history

No thanks buddy. Everytime I waste my time discussing classics with 'art history' majors, it turns into this. Contrarians arguing against convention and real evidence using assumptions.

somehow i feel like that table isn't going to help

So you have a context-absent appearance of her name, maybe, and are going to rally behind this as proof.

But when there are 2 indo european goddesses that are readily identifiable with Athena, what is that amazing coincidence?

You are stretching everything to reach conclusions that, in scholarship, are rejected at unsubstantable. Except your Zeus shit, that is just ignorance on your part.

Well if you don't accept Chadwick, the leading scholar on the topic, then I don't know what else to tell you. Athena is indisputably Cretan, go try and find an IE origin for her.

Zeus being raised on Crete in a story has nothing to do with him being a "Minoan deity".

On the contrary it has a great deal to do with it. Deities who are given foreign origins are very often foreign deities, and the myths of a god's origin generally coincides with the origin of that god's cult. So while it's not conclusive, it is very solid evidence.

WUZ

Again, check their sources, as Yiffy as art history majors are, these guys here atleast cite their sources and do their research.

That clothing is completely illogical
Why would they wear anything if not for modesty?
Athens was the first civilization

No it isn't.
Zeus is plainly indo european and his Cretan origin is mostly likely the result of 1) syncretism with the major diety of the Greeks #1 subjects and a people they admired.

See. Zeus-ammon.

He was only born on Crete in the context of needing to be hidden in the narrative, that's not his origin by any means.

>origin of that god's cult
You're aware the Mycenaeans had established themselves on Crete for centuries before the collapse of the Bronze Age right? If a prominent Zeus cult developed on Crete, there is no reason to believe it was of Minoan origin and not simply a Mycenaean one.

>Deities who are given foreign origins are very often foreign deities
By the time of Hesiod, hell even Homer, Crete wasn't foreign by any means. It was as Greek as it gets. And when they do give foreign origin for deities, they do it in a very self-aware manner. There is no evidence of a Greek treating Zeus as if he's a foreign god, as they did, for example, with Dionysos.

>Atlantis

You know absolutely nothing.

Zeus evolved out of the PIE sky-God Dyeus Piter. Cretan "Zeus" is due to interpretatio graeca, the same way they referred to the Egyptian deity Ammon as Ammon-Zeus.

That source says that Minoan Athena is derived from a luwian sun goddess.

Diwias has been proposed as cognate to PIE dyeus. Balts and celts had sun goddesses.

That's 2 proposed connections of 'Minoan athena' to Indo-European roots, with 2 counter part goddesses in distant Indo-European cultures.

Try harder to make my case for me.

1- again, cultural significance, probably something related to fertility and whatnot, they likely didn't view breasts as sexual like we do. In fact, many cultures alive today don't, just look at the Masaai

2- Minoan crete existed for millenia before athens, they were the first civilization on europe period, and one of the most advanced civilizations of ancient history, with many technological feats of architecture and art, such as baths, urbanism, indoor plumbing, you name it, they were essentially europe's civilizational powerhouse at the time.