A part of a wonderfully vivid fresco from the Akrotiri site on the Aegean island of Thera (nowadays called Santorini) in the photo shows two boy boxers who obviously belong to a developed culture and judging by jewellery, distinct social circles. Believe it or not, this amazing fresco was created over 3,500 years ago, centuries before the Trojan War, and almost half a millennium before the Stone Age, in a world which, according to ever more popular interpretation, holds the solution to a famous Plato mystery on Atlantis.
The fresco belongs to the age which is traditionally known as the Bronze Age, and it is part of a well-known ancient Minoan culture – this unexpectedly advanced society developed much before the birth of Greek civilization, during the second millennium BC, by a gradual evolution from primitive communities of the Stone Age followed by the early phase of the Metal Age.
There are numerous myths in the Hellenic heritage which preserved the memory of the world before the arrival of warring Greek tribes to the Aegean – the legend about a monstrous bull Minotaur and the labyrinth on Crete – however, few believed that this culture had really existed before the arrival of the Achaeans. After Schliemann discovered Troy in Asia Minor (aka Anatolia), a British archaeologist Arthur Evans (who was a sort of an ambassador of the Balkan people and a proponent of the liberation from Austria) tried his luck in 1900, on Crete, and discovered ancient Minoan capital – Knossos.
As Jeremy McInerney, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, stated in the last year’s published comprehensive overview of Greek history titled Greece in Ancient World, the Minoan culture, in addition to their worshipping of bull shaped deity, is characterized by papyrus treatment and script development (Linear A, followed by Linear B), complex religion (much different from the Hellenic pantheon) and the so-called redistribution economy, which became known precisely due to the script.
A detailed analysis of preserved Minoan records from Knossos has yielded a bit disappointing results in terms of their literary range. The Iliad and the Odyssey will require a thousand more years and another poet such as Homer. It turns out that ancient Cretans used the script, (at that time) the ultra-modern technology, which effectively ended Prehistory, exclusively to keep exhaustive economic records, and they harvested and kept grain, oil and wine in common storehouses for crises and supply of various artisans, ranging from goldsmiths and blacksmiths to perfume makers, which testifies to the high organizational level of this early society.
Nevertheless, despite the lack of high literature, the art achievements of primitive Minoans are truly amazing. Along with numerous bull figurines, there are other religious representations, a series of domestic frescoes, not only of boy boxers but also some other exciting representations of naval battles and everyday life – sophisticated, on occasion, decadently clothed women in splendid dresses, papyrus fields, fishermen and to top it all – astonishing compositions of blue monkeys and miraculous flying dolphins, which Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos discovered in the ashes of Thera in 1967.
The Minoan culture spread to numerous islands around Crete – the city of Akrotiri was founded 150 km to the north of Knossos, on the island of Thera, in a caldera of an extinct volcano, in a beautiful and fertile ground, which ancient Minoans had not expected to be a temporary dormant threat. Then, most likely, during the summer between 1627 and 1620 BC, an eruption on Thera occurred – the greatest volcanic eruption ever recorded in human history.
The event marked numerous later Greek legends, while the consequences were recorded in Egypt, as well as in Chinese chronicles. A recent Smithsonian Institution research has revealed that the volcano on Thera ejected up to 100 km3 of materials, which makes this event the so-called super-colossal explosion.
The force of this eruption is considered approximately four times stronger than the Krakatau volcano explosion and comparable to the explosion of 150 thermonuclear bombs. What followed was a series of terrifying earthquakes and a devastating tsunami which rapidly reached Crete and destroyed cities of the Minoan world. Due to the massive amount of ash in the atmosphere, the sky darkened and climate consequences were not negligible – there was cooling which interrupted agriculture for a longer period. It was momentous and the Minoan civilization never recovered from it, since it evidently brought about its downfall.
The scale of this event had been unknown to initial modern researchers until in late 1860, engineers on Santorini did not start to dig volcanic ash for the production of cement and construction of the Suez Canal when the monstrous crater was discovered both on land and in the water. Down the lane in the same ash archaeologist marinates would discover painted walls and part of the cosmopolitan settlement Akrotiri.
According to historian Jeremy McInerney, all of this stands to reason that the Minoan culture was actually the mythical Atlantis. After all explorations in the depths of the Atlantic and other world seas, it may have been around, in Hellas’ neighbourhood. Similarly to how the story of Theseus and the Minotaur preserved the memory of the first Greek encounters with Crete and sailings to Knossos, this ancient legend on Atlantis and the story Plato produced in his work The Timaeus contains the grain of historical truth about a mighty civilization which preceded Ancient Greece. About a world which was resplendent at its height, and then ravaged by a volcano and buried by waves
S.B.