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In desperation, Minos consults the oracle at Delphi, and on his return has Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur.

The offspring of this union is the Minotaur. Pasiphaë nurses him, but as he grows he becomes ever more ferocious. Being the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast, he has no natural source of nourishment and thus devours man for sustenance. (There is evidence that the Minoans practiced human sacrifice and even cannibalism in their religious rites.)

He must kill the bull to show honor to the deity, but instead decides to keep it because of its beauty. He thinks, Poseidon will not care if he keeps the white bull and sacrifices one of his own. To punish Minos, Poseidon makes Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, fall deeply in love with the bull. Pasiphaë has craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow, and climbing inside, mates with the white bull.

After ascending to the throne, Minos prays to Poseidon, to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of support.

The Mycenaeans were a military civilization whose semi-mythical conquest of Troy is described in Homer. The Mycenaean conquest of the Minoans occurred soon after the destruction of Thera and before the fall of Troy. Hence the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur may be interpreted as a metaphor for Mycenaean ascendancy.

THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR "When he had grown up and become a most ferocious animal, and of incredible strength, they tell that Minos had him shut up in a prison called the labyrinth, and that he had sent to him there all those whom he wanted to die a cruel death" Giovanni Boccaccio

Just as in legendary Atlantis, in the world of Bronze Age Crete and Thera the god most feared was Poseidon.

The Atlanteans were said to host 'bull-games' in the central sanctuaries of their city.

Just like Atlantis, Theran homes were decorated in 'red, black and white stone'.

Like Atlantis, Thera was destroyed in a matter of days. We are told that after the catastrophe in Atlantis, ' shoal mud' made the ocean impassable - the Theran volcano would have thrown out rafts of volcanic pumice, some of them three feet thick, making the oceans all around impossible to navigate. The Santorini Islands are surrounded by 530 square miles of volcanic rock on the ocean floor, in places close to the coast up to 260 feet thick.

The theory gained increased currency as reconstructions of the island's pre-eruption shape and landscape frescoes located under the ash both strongly resembled Plato's description.

Speculation suggesting that Thera was the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis began with the excavation of Akrotiri in the 1960s.

The nearby Minoan settlement at Akrotiri was entombed in a layer of pumice.

So far no bodies have been discovered in the remains. One theory suggests that the islanders, warned by the initial earthquake, managed to flee. 'God only knows where these people are. I believe they were camped somewhere on the island waiting for the earthquakes to finish. And one day we will find them.' Professor Christos Doumas

A massive tsunami devastated the coastal areas of Crete and destroyed many Minoan settlements.

Only the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815, the 181 AD eruption of Lake Taupo, and possibly Baekdu Mountain's 969 AD eruption have released more material into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 years.

The sonic impact of the explosion was so great that everyone within a radius of 80 kilometers was immediately deafened. As far afield as Egypt, eastern Turkey and Ireland the sky turned black, temperatures dropped and crops failed.

The total volume of material belched from the eruption was a mile-square pile of dirt stacked nine miles high, making the blast about 120 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The rock likely rode across the ocean waves at the time of the eruption, a superheated pyroclastic flow of light ash and pumice.

The eruption on the island of Thera (present-day Santorini about 100 km from Crete) occurred around 1650 BC.

ATLANTIS "Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent . . . But, there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune. . . the island of Atlantis . . .disappeared in the depths of the sea." Critias in Plato’s ‘Timaeus and Critias’

We have no record of a king Minos or of any other named monarch, male or female. The Minoans did not seek to associate the king with the immortal gods, like the Egyptians or Mesopotamians, but rather worshipped a particular vision of nature. From this standpoint, images glorifying the king were unnecessary.

The Cretan kings were extremely wealthy, yet they appear to have ordered no sculpture, memorials, king-lists or other works to boast of their power and status. We find nothing like the mighty monuments to the god-kings of Egypt. Only saffron gatherers.

A major festive celebration was exemplified in the famous athletic Minoan bull dance. The type of bull used by ancient Minoan bull leapers was a crossbreed giant Auroch bull, now extinct in Europe. It had a shoulder height of over 6ft (180cm) and a hoof size similar to the size of a human head.

- the women's white.

- and include many depictions of ordinary people, with the genders distinguished by colour: the men's skin is reddish-brown -