6.3 Europe: 1500 to 1000 b.c.

Southern europe

Back to Europe 3000 to 1500 B.C.

Eastern mediterranean islands

The Cretan civilization ended within the first fifty years of this time period but the exact nature and cause of the destruction is not known. Syridon Marinatos, late Inspector General of Antiguities of Greece, believed that Crete was destroyed by a tremendous volcanic action in Thera, the island known anciently as Kalliste and later also as Sartorini. This last eruption of the Thera volcano was followed by massive tidal waves as the island center collapsed, and these waves surged outward perhaps 650 feet high at probably two hundred miles an hour, dealing the settlements of Crete a pulverizing blow. The ash was carried as far as 1600 miles, killing vegetation and choking harbors. The force of this volcanic explosion has been equated with that of 500 to 1,000 atomic bombs. The ash fallout plunged the Aegean Sea area into night for weeks. Total deposits of the ash on the remnant of Thera are still two hundred feet deep and the same ash has been found recently to be a layer seven feet thick some 9,850 feet deep on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea, 87 miles from the volcano. Scandinavian scholars date this tremendous upheaval of the Mediterranean world as late as 1,200 B.C. and feel that the Sea People who roamed the Mediterranean, raiding the coasts of Asia Minor and Egypt were displaced peoples from island and other coastal civilizations destroyed in this great cataclysm. The period is likened by Heyerdahl (Ref. 95 ) to what he has described as a similar great unknown tumult of just before 3,000 B.C. There is no doubt but that the blast completely changed the Mediterranean, whether it completely destroyed Crete or weakened it for subsequent invasion by Mycenaeans, or whatnot. The Thera explosion was four times greater than the A.D.1,883 Java eruption that took 36,000 lives and spread a cloud of ash around the earth' (Ref. 129 , 176 , 109 )

Arguments still go on about the actual dating of the great Thera incident, some recent revisions of radio-carbon datings indicating that it occurred about 1,600 B.C. and thus could not have had direct bearing on the Cretan demise. Regardless, there is no doubt that even before its final end, Crete had been subjected to devastating attacks in its island territories by the Phoenicians, new masters of the Mediterranean, and to attacks at home by the Mycenaean, "barbarian" Greeks. The latter, perhaps simply following their own warlike instincts for plunder, definitely came ashore on Crete, at least later, and left their marks, destroying whatever remained of all the palaces except Knossos, which they used for their own capital. The Mycenaean rulers wrote their language in Linear B which has now been at least partially deciphered and appears to be a form of ancient Greek. By 1,375 B.C. even Knossos was burned to the ground and whether this was done by rebelling, remnant Minoans or squabbling Mycenaeans chief s, no one knows. A disastrous expedition to Sicily had been undertaken at about that time, and its failure may have led to the fall of the Knossos lords. Still another view, however, is that Knossos remained functional until 1, 150 B.C. when it fell to invading Dorian Greeks. (Ref. 188 ) The last vestiges of the Cretan or Minoan civilization in their colonies along the coast of Asia Minor were also destroyed at a still later period by Ionian Greeks who then made their own settlements there. Remnants or refugees from the Cretan society are said to have fled to the Palestine coast, where they became known as Philistines