The Critias and Minoan Crete

A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete

The first advanced Bronze Age civilization of Europe was established by the Minoans about 5,000 years before present. Since Sir Arthur Evans exposed the Minoan civic centre of Knossos, archaeologists have speculated on the origin of the founders of the civilization. Evans proposed a North African origin; Cycladic, Balkan, Anatolian and Middle Eastern origins have also been proposed. Here we add...

Abandonment of Minoan palaces on Crete in relation to the earthquake induced changes in groundwater supply

Mysterious abandonment of palaces on Crete during the Late Minoan period was always a challenging problem for archeologists and geologists. Various hypotheses explained this event by effects of tsunamis, earthquakes or climatic changes that were caused by the volcanic eruption of the Santorini volcano. While each of them or their possible combination contributed to the abandonment of palaces an...

Minoan weights

Climate change and the demise of Minoan civilization

Climate change has been implicated in the success and downfall of several ancient civilizations. Here we present a synthesis of historical, climatic, and geological evidence that supports the hypothesis that climate change may have been responsible for the slow demise of Minoan civilization. Using proxy ENSO and precipitation reconstruction data in the period 1650–1980 we present empirical and ...

Agent-Based Modeling of the Early Minoan Social Organization Structure

In this work, we develop a generic agent-based model (ABM) for simulating ancient societies. Agents in our model are completely autonomous, in contrast to most existing ABMs used in archaeology. We employ this model to evaluate the impact of different social organization paradigms and agricultural strategies on population viability and evolving spatial distribution of settlement locations, at a...