Chapter 4: Laying the Foundations - The Old European Civilizations PART ONE: CRETE AND TROY
As the Neolithic revolution became more widespread and larger fixed settlements began to spring up, it became inevitable that these Old Europeans and Proto-Nordic types would start establishing formal societies. The so called "Old European" civilizations then came into being, laying much of the groundwork for the later development of Classical Greece and Rome. Although these Old European civilizations were in fact quite distinct from classical Greece and Rome, they are often mistakenly thought of as one and the same thing. The original, or Old European settlements, dominated huge areas of Europe and Russia, stretching from Italy right through to the Black sea, including all of modern Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and part of the Ukraine. The crucial difference is however that the Old European civilizations were created by the original continental Europeans (Proto-Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean, with the latter two being in the majority) while the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome received their impetus from Indo-European or Nordic invasions which had started around 5000 BC. The continental Old European civilizations in the Aegean were the Cretan civilization, centered at Knossos on the island of Crete; the city state of Troy situated adjacent to the Dardanelles in Asia Minor; certain smaller city states on the Greek mainland; and the Etruscans in Italy. These city states were the first to fall before the great Indo-European invasions, people who had mastered the art of copper working. Absorbed into the Indo-European peoples, the Old Europeans largely disappeared and this mix of White peoples laid the basis for the Mycenaean culture which replaced the Cretan civilization as the dominant force in the Aegean. CRETE - WORLD'S FIRST FLUSHING TOILETS The island of Crete, situated to the south of Greece, was the home to the Cretan civilization, also known as the Minoan civilization (named after Minos, in legend the most powerful of the Cretan kings). The original Mediterranean racial composition of this first Cretan civilization has been confirmed by the anatomists Bowdy Dawkins, W.L.H. Duckworth and Felix von Lauschan, all of whom excavated and examined skeletal remains on Crete: their unanimous conclusion was that the Cretans were all members of the (now virtually extinct) Mediterranean sub race. (Race, John R. Baker, Oxford University Press, 1974, page 516). This skeletal evidence is backed up by the art forms left by the Cretans themselves, particularly in the depictions of social events which are still existent on the walls of the now ruined great Cretan palace at Knossos.
Below: An excellent image of three Old European, or Mediterranean, racial types, taken from a surviving fresco on the walls of the ruins of the palace at Knossos. The links between this ancient civilization and ancient Egypt are confirmed through surviving records and the fact that the artists at Knossos followed the Egyptian convention of painting males with red skins and females with white skins.
By the year 3000 BC, Crete had contact with the budding Egyptian civilization, and many Cretan religious customs and social habits were taken directly from Egypt. Being an island state, it would be fairly logical that the Cretans would possess well developed seafaring skills. The Cretans were governed by a priest king who had his residence at Knossos. This palace rose several stories high and was the ultimate in luxury at the time. The city of Knossos itself appears to have been destroyed by an earthquake in 1400 BC - the result of the titanic volcanic eruption which destroyed the neighboring island civilization of Santorini. However, enough artifacts have survived to enable a clear picture of the racial types who inhabited the island to be formed. Most of the walls were of painted plaster, decorated with elaborate frescoes, with the most famous being of a Cretan national sport, "bull jumping" - where brave athletes would grab a charging bull by the horns and somersault backwards over the length of the bull's body.
Minoan art provides fascinating insights into the nature of the society at the time - men and women dressed for the warm climate, with women bare breasted, and men beardless. Ancient Cretans followed the Egyptian artistic convention of painting males with red skins and females with white skins. Flowers, plants, sea creatures and dolphins feature prominently in their art forms, indicating that their society was advanced and wealthy enough to concern itself beyond just basic survival activities. One interesting original produced by the Cretan palace of Knossos was a running water sanitation system - the first "flushing" toilet in the world. The exact date of the collapse of the Cretan civilization is unfortunately not recorded, but it stopped functioning as a cultural unit when the island was invaded by an Indo-European Nordic tribe, the Mycenaeans, around the year 1500 BC.
The Cretans were thereafter physically absorbed into the Mycenaeans, and later became an integral part of the civilization of classical Greece. In 1900, a British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, rediscovered Knossos and found baked clay tablets with two types of writing, dating from around 2000 BC. These are called Linear A and Linear B scripts, possibly the oldest identifiable forms of European continental writing (if the "writing stone" found at the Caves of Mes d' Azil in France and the Tartaria Tablet from Romania are discounted). Later research showed that the Linear B script was a form of Mycenaean writing, (and which has been deciphered) while the Linear A script was original Cretan (and which has not been deciphered).
CITY OF TROY - FIRST BUILT 3000 BC Around the year 750 BC, two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were set down and attributed to the blind poet Homer. The Iliad describes the war between the Greek city states and the city of Troy, while the Odyssey tells of the adventures of an Ionian king Odysseus, during his return journey home after the war with Troy ended. For many years the city of Troy was thought to exist only in Homer's poems and was associated with the famous story of the Wooden Horse. The city of Troy was however, actually discovered in 1870 by an amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann. Instead of discovering just one city, Schliemann unearthed a total of nine cities, all built on top of one another, indicating a whole period of history about which very little is known. The earliest city on the site dates from about 3000 BC and the various cities (called Troy I - IX) were alternatively destroyed by earthquakes, fire or war, as recounted in Homer's poems. It is difficult to state for certainty how much of the wooden horse story is true (where Greek soldiers are supposed to have infiltrated the city of Troy hidden in a trick wooden horse after unsuccessfully having besieged Troy for nearly ten years) but it is likely to have some basis in fact as Troy and many Greek City States were at war with one another around the year 1,200 BC. The last Trojan city, number IX, appears to have been a Greek and later a Roman city known as Ilium. As with Crete, the date of the exact end of Troy has also been lost with the passage of time.
By the time Troy had fallen, the great Indo-European invasions of the Greek mainland had already started, and it is possible that the city itself may at one stage have been destroyed during one of these invasions. To Part Two: The Etruscans, The Middle East and North India All material (c) copyright Ostara Publications, 1999. Re-use for commercial purposes strictly forbidden. | |||||||||||||||
