Crete is legitimately the birthplace of Europe in this respect.Įven today this mysterious people remain in our legends the starting point of Western culture and civilization, although we cannot be certain of anything. It is on Crete that Zeus was raised, protected by the mysterious Curetes, and it is on this island that he brought desguised as a bull the Phoenician princess Europa. As late as Plato, the Greeks remembered Minos as the great king of a seafaring people, so powerful that he rid the sea of pirates and forced the Athenians into paying a yearly tribute consisting of seven young men and seven maidens. not much, they have always been an integral part of Greek, and therefore European, civilization. But for all that we know of Minoan civilization, i.e. Rather, the historical Minoans discovered barely a hundred years ago by Sir John Evans were certainly not Greek, but–linguistically and ethnically–related to the Near East.
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