Beautiful Minoan women from a fresco in the palace of Knossos, Crete, c. 1,500 BCE. Wikipedia
The Bronze Age
The Cycladic, the Minoan, and the Mycenaean cultures define the Bronze Age of Greece, 3,100-1,000 BCE. This was a period of flourishing architecture, craftmanship, agriculture, sanitation, including the earliest forms of Greek writing deciphered from Linear B tablets. Greek trade and seafaring in the Aegean increased considerably during the early Bronze Age, sometime between 3,100 and 2,000 BCE. Economic activities, already growing in the Neolithic period, 7,000 to 3,100 BCE, simply accelerated in the Bronze Age. The earliest mining and metallurgy in Greece took roots in the Cycladic islands. However, the island of Lemnos in the northern Aegean, had Poliochni, a town distinguished by its pioneering planning, architecture, and metallurgy. Because of Poliochni, Lemnos became an outstanding center of metalworking and technological innovation in the Bronze Age.
Depas amphikypellon, Poliochni in the island of Lemnos. Early Bronze Age, 3rd millennium BCE. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Photo: Schuppi, Wikipedia
Nevertheless, the Cyclades made considerable advances in shipbuilding, propulsion, and sea travel with the assistance of pictorial representations of the constellations. In fact the Cycladic islanders were so much caught up in nautical technology, sea exploration, fishing, and culture of ships that they were the first people in the Aegean to incise natural phenomena, ships, and fish on pottery, carve them on rocks, and create lead models of them. The material culture of Cyclades was original and rich in architecture, pottery, and marble carvings.
Daskalio and Keros
Daskalio, islet next to Keros and south of Naxos in Cyclades. Archaeological findings on Dhaskalio — 46 marble buildings — dating to 4,600 years BCE show advanced Greek civilization in the Cyclades. Photo: Greek Ministry of Culture
Archaeological excavations in Daskalio and Keros confirm the general picture of a flourishing culture in Cyclades. Daskalio and Keros are tiny Cycladic islands connected to each other centuries ago. They are relatively close and south of Naxos.
Aegean islands, including Lemnos in northern central Aegean, looking like a walking bear. Southern Aegean is home of the islands of a circle: Kyklades / Cyclades, north of the large island of Crete. The Cycladic island of Thera exploded in 1600’s BCE. Thera looks like a semicircle, a small and tiny piece of a broken island in the southern zone of the Cyclades. The almost round Naxos, the largest Cycladic island, is in the northern part of Cyclades. Tiny dots, Daskalio and Keros, are seen near the southern periphery of Naxos. NASA.
Greek and British archaeologists excavated Daskalio and Keros. As early as 2,750 BCE, Keros had a thriving metallurgy and craftsmanship. It had a maritime sanctuary that attracted Greeks from the neighborhood islands who brought marble, ceramic, and stone figurines as gifts to the gods. The recovery of these artifacts triggered their looting and sale to museums and private collectors. The British and Greek archaeologists and the almost indifferent Greek government failed to safeguard those Greek Bronze Age treasures.
Harp player from Keros, 2,600 BCE. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Photo: Robur.q Wikipedia Commons
Daskalio, even more than Keros, had a remarkable culture. At around 2,250 BCE, it had megara / anaktora (large buildings), as well as metal works of outstanding quality, including advanced drainage, plumbing and sanitation. This level of civilization was no different than that of Thera, another Cycladic island that probably had close relations with Keros and Daskalio.
Minoan Crete
Bull-leaping, Knossos Palace, Crete, 1,600 BCE. Herakleion Archaeological Museum. Photo: Deror Avi. Wikipedia Commons
The largest Greek island, Crete, also flourished during the Bronze Age. Crete in fact built such a sophisticated civilization that it probably influenced the development of Mycenaean culture in Peloponnesos and mainland Greece. It is possible to speak of the Minoan Peace in the Aegean and Crete. It lasted for about 1,000 years between 2,000 and 1,000 BCE. The adjective Minoan comes from King Minos, son of Zeus and Europe / Europa. Europa was the daughter of Agenor, son of Poseidon and Libya. Zeus took the form of a bull, so beautiful that Europa climbed on it, and Zeus brought her to Crete.
God of metallurgy Hephaistos built the winged Talos robot for Zeus who gifted it to his lover, princess Europa — in Crete. Talos protected Europa and Crete by flying over the island 3 times a day. The bull represented Zeus. Courtesy Numismatic Museum, Athens.
Europa gave birth to Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthys. Europa’s brother, Kadmos, kept searching for her until he reached Thebes in Central Greece. Minos became king of Crete. He married Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun god Helios. Minos, like his brother Rhadamanthys, was a legislator and judge. Herodotos and Plato say that Minos exercised tremendous power at sea. Aristotle says that Minos established a thalassocracy, an empire of the sea in the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Crete was intended by nature to be dominant in Hellas. It is a large island of 3,260 square miles in area, located 99 miles south of Peloponnesos, with a coastline of 650 miles.
Crete photographed by an American cosmonaut in 2011, NASA.
Crete is well situated in the midst of Hellas and Hellenes. It had no military forts or an army in the fourth-third millennia BCE. Thucydides says that Minos’ navy was the first in the Greek world. With such a pioneering force, Minos became a master of the Aegean, ending piracy in the sea, and governing the Cyclades with his sons. Minoan Crete was also a center of early Greek civilization. The surviving jewelry, ceramic and fresco treasures leave no doubt Minoans loved the beautiful.
Beautiful Minoan dancer from the palace of Knossos, 1,600-1450 BCE. Photo: Wolfgang Sauber. Wikipedia Commons
The piety of the Minoans for the Greek gods linked them to the Greeks of the Aegean and Ionian islands and those of the mainland. Minoan ceramic vases were delicate, attractive, and very useful. Like Knossos, Phaistos was a thriving Minoan polis.
Phaistos. Photo: Jebulon. Wikipedia, Public Domain
One of the most enigmatic and important discoveries in the ruins of the palace of Phaistos was the Phaistos Disk. The cyclical clay disc is dated to 1850 to 1600 BCE. It is a symbol of Greek writing and printing. The Phaistos Disc has a diameter of 5.9 inches. Both sides are covered by a spiral of 45 stamped symbols, some of which are related to the signs of the still undeciphered Linear A script. Luigi Pernier, an Italian archaeologist, discovered the Phaistos Disc in the Phaistos palace of Crete in 1908. Since then the disc has been put under the microscope of scholars. Some of those archaeologists claimed the Phaistos script was not Greek, relating it to Semitic, Egyptian, and Indo-European origins. However, other more wise scholars claim the Phaistos Disc is a Greek treasure of Minoan origins and civilization.
In 1650 BCE, the explosion of Thera did some damage to Crete and its Minoan culture. In 1450 BCE Mycenaean Greeks (from Mycenae in Peloponnesos) were in charge in Knossos, one of the key states in Crete. But even before the coming of the Mycenaeans to Minoan Crete, mainland Greeks were in intimate contact with Minoans. After all, the people of mainland Greece and Crete were Greeks.
In the second millennium BCE, the important states in eastern Crete were Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia, and Zakro. In continental Greece the states that made a difference included Mycenae-Argos and Pylos (in Peloponnesos), Thebes and Orchomenos (in Central Greece) and Iolkos (in Thessaly). The last two, Orchomenos and Iolkos, played a decisive role in the Argonaut expedition to Kolchis, the Greeks’ Far East (the state of Georgia in modern times). All these Bronze Age states had monarchical bureaucracies that supervised specialized labor for domestic and international trade. Furthermore, they did large-scale works like the draining of Lake Kopais in northern Boeotia (Central Greece).
Modern Greece and its Minoan inheritance
Modern Greece has never felt at ease with its ancient culture: the fantastic inheritance of original scientific and technological achievements that made our world, Homer, Aristotle, the Parthenon, the invention of democracy, the Olympics, the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Alexander the Great, and even the glorious Minoan beginnings of Greek civilization. This hesitation started in the fourth century when the Eastern Roman emperor Constantine declared war against Hellenic and Roman polytheism. That war is still stifling the genius of ancient Greek civilization in modern Greece.
The reason for this abnormal behavior is that for close to 1,600 years polytheistic Greeks were forced to become monotheistic Christians. That transformation was like a Titanic earthquake that nearly wiped out Hellenic civilization. And another reason for the reluctance of modern Greeks to embrace their ancestors is that they lost their freedom for hundreds of years. The Romans controlled Greece from 146 BCE until the sixth century when emperor Justinian shut down the Academy of Plato in 529 and Greek replaced Latin as the official language of the state. From the sixth century until 1453, the rulers were Christian and mostly of Greek origins. The fourth crusade of 1204 divided Greece among European conquerors, thus preparing the ground for the final conquest of Greece by the Mongol Moslem Turks in 1453.
Western Europeans realized the power of ancient Greek thought. They supported Christianity in Greece in order to prevent the Renaissance in modern Greece. The Turks run Greece, 1453-1821, through Christian clergy.
This chronic alienation from their Hellenic traditions, and, equally, very long foreign influence and control, crashed the Greeks’ ancient polytheistic religion, traditions of democracy, science and freedom. Christian preachers never ceased cursing the ancient Greeks. In 1082, the Orthodox church, with the support of the imperial government in Constantinople, anathematized ancient Hellenic civilization and those who accept or study it.
Thus, modern Greeks have been torn between the ancient glory of their ancestors and the grim reality of their lives. They still see foreigners running their country. Those with education know that their country is a cemetery for hundreds of ancient temples, stadia, theaters, schools and countless other treasures. Some of those treasures fill their museums, which have been bringing millions of tourists to their land.
Members of the Greek ruling class receive their education largely in America and Europe. They govern Greece for the interest and profit of their foreign benefactors. Their government is a copy of European governments. And since Greece is a member of the European Union and NATO, the country takes its orders from EE and NATO. For economic survival alone, the Greek government has museums full of ancient Greek treasures and parrots the rhetoric of American, French and German archaeologists about the value of ancient Hellenic culture.
Professor of astronomy from the University of Athens, Xenophon Moussas, said to me in an email of July 23, 2025, how disappointed he was with the treatment of antiquities by Greek authorities. While foreigners, and to some degree Turks, study and present Greek antiquities in a respectful manner, Greeks have a problem with their archaeological inheritance. “We, in this country, hide, bury, or destroy them,” Moussas said. “Most Greeks cannot stand their heavy Hellenic inheritance. They break the archaeological treasures they discover and, at the same time, try to break us, too. They hide the ancient treasures. Information about many of the archaeological treasures they discover never gets published. It’s necessary that transparency governs archaeological diggings and discoveries. We pay. We should know what happens in archaeological research and excavations.”
I agree with Moussas. He is a defender of the great Minoan circular tower, The Gate of Heaven, about which more below. Now back to the deception of the Greek Ministry of Culture.
On July 12, 2025, the Greek minister of culture, Lina Mendoni, thanked profusely the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, because UNESCO “registered” the Minoan Palaces on the World Heritage List, thus giving them a worldwide recognition. Mendoni then praised the Minoan civilization. She said that the Minoan civilization was “one of the most brilliant civilizations of the prehistoric Aegean.” She added that these palaces, which are all over Crete, “are the authentic expressors of Minoan civilization. The palaces were not only administrative and economic centers. They were centers of culture, art and technological innovation… [and housed] a developed system of writing and administration.”
Lina Mendoni’s hymn of Minoan palaces is largely correct but misleading. Why did she consider the Minoan civilization prehistoric? The palaces, Linear B, and the treasures in the museums from the Minoan era are historical, i.e. they have been dated to the Bronze Age. They were products of history. Besides, two important epics, the Argonautica of Apollonios Rhodios and those of Homer, document life and civilization in the Bronze Age. The Trojan War was not a prehistoric fairy tale. It took place during the Minoan era. The great national poet and teacher of the Greeks, Homer, wrote his Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, as an anthem to Greek civilization. The Iliad is much more than the story of the Trojan War. It is also against war, but especially civil war. The Odyssey relates much more than the extraordinary efforts of Odysseus to return home to Ithaca. Homer is myth, history, philosophy, patriotism, science and technology. That is the reason why Aristotle loved him, repeatedly citing the Homeric Epics in his philosophical and scientific works. The Philhellene Roman Emperor Hadrian, 117-138, asked the Oracle at Delphi about Homer. Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, said that Homer was from Ithaca. His father was Telemachos, who was the son of King of Ithaca Odysseus. His mother was Polykaste, who was the daughter of King Nestor of the Mycenaean Pylos in southern Peloponnesos (Anthologia Palatina 14.102).
Ancient Greek testimonies and astronomical research of the 21st century tell us that the Trojan War was a historic event at the end of the 13th century / beginnings of the 12th century BCE. For example, in the Odyssey (20.356-357), Homer talks about the eclipse of the Sun over the Ionian Sea. Astronomers studied this eclipse and said the eclipse took place on 30 October 1207 or 16 April 1178 BCE. I describe these facts in my book on Freedom (2025).
Except for the Greeks, we don’t know of any other people who inhabited the prehistoric or historic Aegean. And during the Bronze Age in the Aegean, the Greek Minoan and Mycenaean cultures left their civilization footprints. Crete, the rest of the Aegean islands, Ionia (Asia Minor) and mainland Greece were Greek and cradles of Greek civilization. Like the Cyclades with their admirable and superior culture in the Bronze Age, Minoan Crete had more than palaces. Crete had multi-story houses with running drinking water and cobbled roads and cleanliness, virtues that arrived in Western Europe in late 19th century.
Fall and capture of Minoan civilization?
The Ministry of Greek Culture enriched Lina Mendoni’s narrative about the Minoan Palaces of Crete, saying:
“The Minoan Palatial Centers constitute the most authentic and representative expression of the flourishing Minoan society, offering evidence of early urban development and revealing complex socio-political structures, functionally organized around a hierarchical system. They were administrative, economic and religious centers… [which] were designed to [serve] the diverse needs and functions of a hierarchical society. These monuments constitute a timeless reference point in the history of humanity as they provide material evidence for the development of early economic systems, such as agriculture, animal husbandry and maritime trade.”
Yes, but ancient Greece had no sacred books, religious doctrines / dogmas or priesthood. Therefore, Minoan, Mycenaean, classical and Alexandrian Age Greece was never a hierarchical society. Also, agriculture and animal husbandry were rarely “economic” systems, vague and political words in our time. Agriculture and animal husbandry were literally civilization because they were a synthesis of agricultural labor, self-sufficiency in food production, piety for the gods and a school of freedom and democracy. Xenophon, Athenian general, historian and student of Socrates, said that farming gave the Greeks food security, political freedom, pleasure, cooperation and civilization. Some of the greatest gods protected agriculture: Demetra (wheat and farming), Dionysos (wine and rural culture), Aristaios (honeybees and wildlife), Pan (sheep, goats, cattle) and Poseidon (horses). Of course, local democracy lived next to the Bronze Age kingdoms of Greece. We see this at the beginning of the second book of Homer’s Odyssey (2.1-84) when young Telemachos called on the elderly leading citizens of the Assembly of Ithaca to help him free his house from the tyranny of his mother’s suitors who had occupied his father’s palace. These details of a vibrant democracy in Ithaca in the early 12th century BCE have escaped the rhetoric of the Ministry of Culture because the Ministry often views history through the blurred lenses of ethnonihilism and sometimes to satisfy bureaucratic “economic” needs, as now with the construction of a new airport in Herakleion for millions more foreign visitors to Crete. The Herakleion airport is already encroaching on the sacred Minoan monument of the Hill of Papoura.
For example, the official summary of the Ministry of Culture, and justified hymn to the truly unsurpassed Minoan civilization of Crete, was made on July 12, 2025, the same day that Greek archaeologists, guided by the Ministry of Culture, decided to bury a Minoan treasure that professor of astronomy, Xenophon Moussas, described as the Gate of Heaven. Moussas becomes lyrical. His description of the Gate of Heaven reminds me of the Antikythera Mechanism or the Meteoroskopeion / Observatory that Greek scientists created in the 2nd century BCE in Rhodes. Certainly the Minoan Gate of Heaven of Crete was paradigmatic for the development of science and technology in ancient Greece. Moussas gives us the basic information about the Gate of Heaven. He sent me a paper he is preparing on Papoura Hill where the Gate of Heaven is located. The information I give about this great achievement of Minoan art and culture comes from Moussas’ work.
So Moussas tells us that Papoura Hill is near Knossos. The Hill is “a humble peak that hides at its core one of the oldest Minoan circular structures. The monument—scaled, circular, and well-oriented—reveals that Minoan Crete did not simply build temples, but created stone time mechanisms: observatories, calendars, and sacred cosmic temples. Papoura is not just a building; it is a Gate of Heaven. It combines:
• Architecture: geometrically aligned with celestial phenomena that regulate social life and mark agricultural work and festivals and, of course, celebrations of the New Year.
• Astronomy: functions as an astronomical center, displaying of relevant knowledge, while King Minos of Crete receives the command from Zeus for the next eight-year cycle.
• Mystagogy: unites heaven, Earth, and community into a single ritual body.”
Mystagogy: Sacred ceremony: miniature wall painting (fresco), possibly from the palace of Knossos. Reconstruction in the British Museum: numerous Minoans attending cult in a sacred grove and around a large tripartite shrine / temple, 1580-1530 BCE. Photo: ArchaiOptix, Wikipedia Commons
Moussas continues:
“The circular tower of Papoura is not simply a memorial: it is an observatory of civilization, an astronomical gate, a laboratory for the worship of the mind and the sky. Its protection and widespread beneficial display and use will… strengthen the notion of Crete as birthplace of astronomical thought. Second, it will show the continuity of Greek civilization on an international scale; and it will create paths for a livable development for local societies. The Hill of Papoura must not be buried under a radar. It must shine like a pharos / lighthouse of memory, science and spirit.”
Top view of the circular tower of the stone mechanism of time, the Gate of Heaven near Knossos, within the airport of Herakleion, Crete. Photo: Ministry of Culture
I fully agree with Moussa. Modern Greece and primarily its scientists and scholars must love and protect their ancient heritage as soon as possible, otherwise foreigners will continue to steal and plunder Greek treasures and monuments. And besides this, disinterest in Greek culture becomes ethnonihilism and ethnocidal, which become betrayal, leading to enslavement and extinction.
Moussas knows what he is saying, and he says it with patriotic responsibility and the virtue of science. He is an astronomer who greatly helped the international study of the Antikythera Mechanism. His work inspired me, and I wrote my book about this huge and great feat of Greek astronomical science and technology, the astronomical Antikythera Mechanism / Meteoroskopeion.
Today’s scientists in Greece often face a state machine that is ethnonihilist. The professor at the University of the Aegean, Ioannis Lyrintzis, for example, gave us information from his colleague, Marios Dionellis, about the Minoan treasure of Papoura Hill: “At dawn [on July 10, 2025],” according to Dionellis, “the civilization of Crete was captured. Not by persecuted immigrants. But by professors and educated archaeologists and by the Ministry of Culture itself and the Central Archaeological Council. With just one negative vote, the scientists (most of them archaeologists) voted in favor of the destruction of one of the most important Minoan monuments in Crete, the building located on Papoura Hill. This is done for the sake of the airport in Kastelli [near Knossos]. They voted to place two giant radars to the right and left of the monument at a distance of 20 meters, with heavy excavations in “the entire hill where the archaeological research has not yet been completed.”
The next day, July 11, 2025, Lyrintzis added that:
“Any other “imperative” work (of military or political importance) is carried out at a distance and with respect for the cultural heritage… Much can be done as long as there is will, science, prudence and patience.”
On July 11, 2025, Stavros Papamarinopoulos, professor at the University of Patras, wrote a letter with his concerns about the precious Minoan treasure of Papoura Hill. He said, among other things, that the supporters of the Papoura Hill include “three scientific societies, the Association of Archaeologists, the Hellenic Archaeometric Society and the EMAEM (SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT GREEK MYTHOLOGY).
THEREFORE the opposition… is [from] hundreds of scientists of VARIOUS specialties.”
Epilogue
The warnings of Moussas, Dionellis, Lyrintzis and Papamarinopoulos about the “fall / capture” of Minoan Crete by corrupt bureaucrat archaeologists and the Ministry of “Culture” of Greece express the corruption in the country — now in 2025. Corruption reflects foreign influence and almost foreign occupation, mainly by EU, NATO, lenders and Turkey. Ethnonihilism is the enemy of Hellenism. It is a mirror of deep national divisions where Greeks hate themselves and the Greek civilization that gave light to humanity and especially to Europe. It embraces foreign influences, especially from America. Greek ethnonihilists in the government grab foreign ideology and make it the policy of the Greek government. For example, NATO and England and America in particular have for long time supported Turkey. This support embraces Greek policy makers, though its implications have had adverse effects on Greece. In fact, that US-UK support of Turkey resulted in the 1974 invasion and capture of north Cyprus by Turkey and, more than 50 years later, Turkey threatens Greece. It’s the same thing with Germany’s refusal to repay their almost 1 trillion euros debt to Greece, a debt from the atrocities and starvation Germans committed and imposed on Greece during 1941-1944. With the support of the United States, Germany has become the leader of the EU. And when in the first 2 decades of the 21st century, Greece dropped into the abyss of debt, the country was nearly crashed by the EU and America’s International Monetary Fund that handled the debt of Greece. EU and IMF treated Greece like an enemy, all the more boosting Germany’s determination to deny its obligations to Greece. And the ethnonihilist leaders of Greece go along with that humiliation. The least they could do is to stop paying their own debt to the EU-IMF.
Ethnonihilism kills. It connects the fear and often the hatred of the enemies of Greece (Germany and Turkey) with the Ephialtes traitorous nightmares of the ruling class in Greece. Treasures like the Gate of Heaven in Knossos, Crete, leave ethnonihilists cold.
The Gate of Heaven on the Minoan Hill of Papoura near Knossos in Crete is not only a stone time mechanism, a pharos / lighthouse of civilization. It resembles other ancient Greek institutions of civilization that enlightened the Greeks for centuries. It would be sacrilege and a grave national and international crime to destroy it for any reason whatsoever.
NOTES
1. Christos Doumas, “The Early Bronze Age (3000-1500 BC)” in History of Humanity: Scientific and Cultural Development, Vol. II, From the Third Millennium to the Seventh Century BC, edited by A.H. Dani and J.-P. Mohen (New York: Routledge, 1996) 147-148. ↑
2. “Keros: Unexpected archaeological finds in the heart of the Aegean,” Archaeology, January 26, 2021. ↑
3. Herodotos, The Histories 3.122; Plato, Laws 4.706a. ↑
4. Aristotle, Politics 1271b 32-40; Herodotos, The Histories 1.171. ↑
5. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.4, 8, 2-4. ↑
6. N. G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1996), 154. ↑
7. Xenophon, Oeconomicos 5.6-14. ↑
8. My citations of Lyrintzis and other professors come from the Forum of the International Hellenic Association, IXA. ↑
