Who Were the Minoans?
Minoan civilization confirmed European by 2013 DNA study
This Bible History Daily article was originally published in May 2013. It has been updated.—Ed.
Who were the Minoans? The Minoan civilization is remembered for its ornate frescoes, including this Prince of the Lillies from the palace at Knossos.
Who were the Minoans? Their civilization in Crete has long been considered Europe’s first great Bronze Age society. The floruit of the Minoan civilization, which spread across Crete in the third millennium B.C.E., occurred in the 18th–16th centuries B.C.E., in the late Middle Bronze Age and the start of the Late Bronze Age. The island is dotted with magnificent palaces, including labyrinthine Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia, and Minoan art and traditions have captivated and influenced the Mediterranean world for thousands of years.
Despite their celebrated legacy, the Minoan civilization remains shrouded in mystery. We do not know what language was spoken on Crete, and the scripts of the early Minoan civilization—Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A—have eluded translation attempts for over a century. Despite extensive archaeological research exploring the history of Crete, the Minoan civilization has always kept close ties to the world of mythology. Sir Arthur Evans, the first person to carry out extensive excavations in Crete, named the society after the mythological king Minos. Crete’s landscape serves as the setting for countless legends, including the birthplace of Zeus, the labyrinth where Theseus killed the Minotaur and the prison that Deadalus and Icarus fled with their ill-fated wings.
But who were the people that left us with such grand mysteries and ornate palaces?
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Sir Arthur Evans claimed that the ancestors of the Minoan civilization came from North Africa, but more recent scholars have suggested dozens of additional forefathers. On May 14, 2013, Nature Communications published the study “A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete,” analyzing mitochondrial DNA from Minoan osseous tissue found in caves at the Cretan Lassithi plateau. It suggests that the Minoan civilization was comprised of local Europeans rather than outsiders. The Greek and American research team writes that “Our data are compatible with the hypothesis of an autochthonous development of the Minoan civilization by the descendants of the Neolithic settlers of the island” and that “shared haplotypes, principal component and pairwise distance analyses refute the Evans North African hypothesis.”
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Who were the Minoans? Knossos’s Ladies in Blue are genetically related to modern Europeans, according to a recent DNA study. Archaeological Museum of Iraklion.
The researchers examined over 100 bone samples from the third and second millennia B.C.E. and found a combination of distinctly European and uniquely Minoan characteristics—with no trace of African descent. The DNA samples are consistent with that of Neolithic, Bronze Age and modern European populations, especially Crete’s modern population. The Minoan people may be related to groups that migrated from Anatolia millennia earlier; if true, this would allow researchers to use cues from known Indo-European languages to help decipher the still-unknown language of the Minoan civilization.
While mysteries about the seafaring Minoan civilization remain, we are one step closer to answering the question: Who were the Minoans? As University of Washington geneticist George Stamatoyannopoulos says, “We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilization were European.”
Read “A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete” in Nature Communications.
Related reading in Bible History Daily:
Bronze Age Collapse: Pollen Study Highlights Late Bronze Age Drought
Early Bronze Age: Megiddo’s Great Temple and the Birth of Urban Culture in the Levant
What Does the Aegean World Have to Do with the Biblical World?
Read more about Minoan civilization in the BAS Library:
The Minoans of Crete: Europe’s Oldest Civilization: Excavating Minoan Sites
Past Perfect: In Pursuit of Minoan Crete
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It is a very broad jump to suggest that a culture termed Minoan originated Europe.
Also suggested is that the culture termed Minoan originated in South America via Africa and subsequently migrated to North America as well as what could be termed southern Europe.
As has happened so often in the past, specifically British scholars have sought to “classify and divide” from a Euro-centric perspective that serves the interest of the British Monarchy and oligarchs of Europe and not necessarily the ‘truth.’
Next I’ll read someone saying Iroquois long-houses are derived from Pre-historic Norse settlers, or that the British are descended from Trojans via Rome. Good grief. Unless there us a deliberate policy of genocide or exile (Assyria, 19th C USA, post WWII Europe) local people people tend to stay put even as culture and elites change. Even invading elites rarely completely expel their predecessors in ruling positions – either the local families identify with the new paradigm (we’re all Romans/Saxons/Arabs etc. now) in order to enhance their prestige/security, or the new elite positions itself as the natural successors of the old to consolidate and legitimise their rule (the Franks, Goths, Lombards etc. in Italy, France, Spain and North Africa, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the gothic commanders in the roman army who stayed and took control of southern wales after the roman withdrawal). Cultures change with no change in the local elite – the makedonians became Greek, and the Baltic Prussians became German as a matter of strategic policy, not because of any change in population at any level of society.
I wonder if this conclusion is right. In that time period there was not a clear diference between Europe, Africa and Asia. Their (cultural) borders were not drawn so absolute as today. So with modern terms we are analyzing a very old culture. In that time period there was no coherent European culture. So in my opnion the conclusion does not say much about the Minoan culture itself. At least it explains almost nothing about their culture and life.
Phaistos Disk, according to DiA, was created in Anatolia 1753 BC. The disc is dedicated to the Mother Goddes, as well as associated with the cult of Amun of Thebes, Egypt. The inscription reads in both directions in verse. Language lexically similar to Sanskrit and Latin, structural – to Polynesian languages. Reading the text from the center is a calendar. Two sides – two seasons (spring/summer and autumn), a three-season ancient year. Back direction – is a message. – dia.esy.es , dia.phpnet.us .
I remember an earlier lifetime living on Minoan Crete several millennia ago, I lived in a row house on a paved street in a suburb of one of the Minoan cities. The people and scenery, buildings and other details were as you see in archaeological text illustrations. I lived in a number of classical civilizations, and some times have vivid dreams, highly detailed of these earlier civilizations. One of them was as a Jew in Babylon millennia ago during the time of King Nebuchadnezzer . In the latter, I could remember meetings of people to discuss the situation we had at that time. This seems as if it would be helpful, reincarnation study in retrieving details of earlier civilizations.
the least helpful and most boring article ever!
Nefertiti was Minoan.The Minoans influenced Egypt,not the other way around.the Minoans taught superior ship building to the Egyptians.That was what the Minoans were exceptional at.They were the trading hub of the ancient world.They traded with everyone and ruled the seas.They were expert Mariners.
The problem with the Minoans = Europeans claim is (beyond the question how ‘European’ the current Europeans actually are – based on genetics studies we can easily claim that they are more Middle Eastern and Central Asian than ‘European’) although they were a geographically European population, they were probably linguistically connected to Asia Minor, to extinct Indo-European languages current Turkey and culturally were influenced more by Middle Eastern than any European culture existing at the same time as themselves, which were all culturally inferior to Minoans. Lastly, there might not have been any one Minoan culture with a solid unified identity and political system, but culturally and linguistically closely related city states with various degrees of connections to different parts of the Aegean and the wider Mediterranean world.
The link to Anatolia is worth verifying with ancient DNA studies and also to test the hypothesis of a connection between the Minoan civilization and the Philistine settlement in Canaan, but I’m not sure any ancient Philistine DNA is available for study. What could be tested is a comparison of Minoan DNA to that of the mummies of the Pharaohs.
It is my understanding through research that the Celtic peoples began in the Middle East and trekked westward over the Caucasus Mountains and eventually landed in the British Isles. We can see ancient Celtic settlements being discovered from the Middle East to the Caucasus through Germany, now the discovery in France, and other discoveries in Spain.
I also read that the Philistines were descended from the Minoans. When the volcano on Thera erupted, it sent peoples fleeing in ships the shores of the eastern Mediteranean regions. The 100ft tsunami that was created by the eruption devasted coastal cities as well the islands. There was a 400 year Greek dark age as a result. The Eyptians have heiroglyphs depicting the island peoples fleeing in ships due to some catastrophic event. I believe Plato’s Atlantis could is about the destruction of the Minoan civilization.