Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

The rhythms and patterns of her sacred dance would have performed the function of evoking her manifest presence, as medieval pilgrims walking the labyrinth of Chartres evoked the Mystic Rose. Homer, describing the shield of Achilles, remarked that the labyrinth was Ariadne's ceremonial dancing ground.

 

 

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The island of Crete is located in the center of the eastern Mediterranean at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

 

 

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It measures about 200 Km from east to west, and between 12 to 58 Km from north to south at its narrowest and widest distances, making it one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean sea. While the island appears today completely deforested, in ancient times timber was one of the natural resources that was commercially exploited and exported to nearby Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, the Aegean Islands and the Greek mainland.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

A great power without a military aristocracy; a palace that was not a royal residence and neither the king was glorified; a religion with no grandeur, while women were equal to men and free. The Minoans were building palaces, paved streets and sewers, while most Europeans were still living in primitive huts and are credited as the first European civilization.

 

 

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From its founding around 2700 BC, the Minoan civilization came to dominate the seas, sailing for hundreds of miles in search of trade, from Spain in the west to Syria in the east.

 

 

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Their palaces count amongst their greatest works of art. The most famous is the palace at Knossos, often called the ‘Palace of Minos’.

 

 

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A multistory complex of corridors, rooms and staircases built around a central courtyard, the palace covered over three acres, was at least three stories high and possessed central plumbing, including running water and flush toilets -a technology that was not seen again in the ancient world for well over 1000 years.

 

 

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Visitors found its 1000 rooms so confusing that it is thought to have inspired the myth of the Minotaur’s Labyrinth.

 

 

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The surviving frescoes are wonderfully alive –

 

 

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- very different from the rigid formal depictions of other contemporary cultures -

 

 

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

 

 

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- the women's white.

 

 

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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.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

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.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

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.

 

 

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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’

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

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

 

 

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

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.