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Prehistoric Crete
Little is known about the rise of ancient Cretan society, because very few written records remain. This contrasts with the superb palaces, houses, roads, paintings and sculptures that do remain.
Cretan history is surrounded by legends (such as those of King Minos; Theseus and the Minotaur; and Daedalus and Icarus) that have been passed to us via Greek historian/poets (such as Homer).
Because of a lack of written records, estimates of Cretan chronology are based on well-established Aegean and Ancient Near Eastern pottery styles, so that Cretan timelines have been made by seeking Cretan artefacts traded with other civilisations (such as the Egyptians) - a well established occurrence. For the earlier times, radiocarbon dating of organic remains and charcoal offers independent dates. Based on this, it is thought that Crete was inhabited from the 7th millennium BCE onwards. The fall of Knossos took place circa 1400 BC. Subsequently Crete was controlled by the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece.
The first human settlement in Crete dates to the aceramic Neolithic. There have been some claims for Palaeolithic remains, none of them very convincing. The finds from Samaria-gorge, idenitfied as Mesolithic by some scholars, seem to be the product of trampling.
The native fauna of Crete included pygmy hippo, pygmy elephant, dwarf deer (Praemegaceros cretensis), giant rodents and insectivores as well as badger, beech marten and a kind of terrestrial otter. Large carnivores were lacking. Most of these animals died out at the end of the last ice-age. It is still not sure if man played a part in this extinction, which is found on other big and medium size Mediterranean islands as well, for example on Cyprus, Sicily and Mallorca Up to now, no bones of the endemic fauna have been identified in Neolithic settlements.
Remains of a settlement found under the Bronze Age palace at Knossos (layer X) date to the 7th Millennium BC cal.
| Date BP
| SDR
| Lab-Number
|
| 8050 | 180 | BM-124
|
| 7910 | 140 | BM-278
|
| 7740 | 140 | BM-436
|
The first settlers introduced cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and dogs, as well as domesticated cereals and legumes.
Up to now, Knossos remains the only aceramic site. The settlement covered approximately 0,35 ha. The sparse animal bones contain the above-mentioned domestic species as well as deer, badger, marten and mouse: the extinction of the local megafauna had not left much game behind.
The pottery Neolithic is known from Knossos, Lera Cave and Gerani Cave. The Late Neolithic sees as proliferation of sites, pointing to a population increase. In the late Neolithic, the donkey and the rabbit were introduced to the island, deer and agrimi hunted. The agrimi, a feral goat, preserves traits of the early domesticates. Horse, fallow deer and hedgehog are only attested from Minoan times onwards.
See Minoan civilization for more detail.
Minoan-Mycenaean Crete
Crete was occupied down to the 15th century BCE by people who did not speak Greek, for evidence of their written language (Linear A) survives, and though it has not been deciphered, it is not Greek. Tablets inscribed in Linear A have been found in numerous sites in Crete, and a few in the Aegean islands. The Cretans (we call them Minoans) established themselves in many islands besides Crete: secure identifications of Minoan off-island sites include Keos ("Kea," off Attica), Kythera ("Kithira," off Lakonia). Melos ("Milos"), Rhodes, and above all, Thera (Santorini), the site about which most is known.
Archaeologists ever since Sir Arthur Evans have identified and uncovered the palace-complex at Knossos, the most famous Minoan site. Other palace sites in Crete such as Phaistos have uncovered magnificent stone-built, multi-story palaces containing drainage systems, and the queen had a bath and a flushing toilet. The expertise displayed in the hydraulic engineering was of a very high level. There were no defensive walls to the complexes. By the 16th century BCE pottery and other remains on the Greek mainland show that the so-called Minoans had far-reaching contacts on the mainland. In the 16th century a major earthquake caused destruction on Crete and on Thera that was swiftly repaired.
But about 1500 BCE a massive volcanic explosion blew the island of Thera apart, casting more than four times the amount of ejecta as the explosion of Krakatau and generating a tsunami is the enclosed Aegean that threw pumice up to 250 meters above sea level on the slopes of Anaphi, 27 km to the east. Any fleet along the north shore of Crete was desroyed and John Chadwick suggests that the hegemony of Cretan fleets had kept the island secure from the Greek-speaking mainlanders. The catastrophe that overtook the Cretan palaces seems to have come about 1450 BCE, when all the sites save Knossos were destroyed by fires.
Mycenaeans from the mainland took over Knossos, rebuilding some parts to suit them. A new writing system Linear B, came out of this civilization and show us that Cretans of this time now spoke a dialect of Greek.
Roman Crete
Crete's provincial Hellenistic period fell into a pattern of combative city-states, harboring pirates. Gortyn, Kydonia (Chania) and Lyttos challenged the primacy of ancient Knossos, preyed upon one another, invited into their feuds mainland powers like Macedonia and its rivals Rhodes and Ptolemaic Egypt, a situation that all but invited Roman interference. In 88 BC Mithridates VI of Pontus on the Black Sea, went to war to halt the advance of Roman hegemony in the Aegean. On the pretext that Knossos was backing Mithradates, Marc Antony attacked Crete in 71 BCE and was repelled. Rome sent Quintus Caecilius Metellus with three legions to the island. After a ferocious three-year campaign Crete was conquered for Rome in 69 BCE, earning this Metellus the agnomen "Creticus." At the archaological sites, there seems to be little evidence of widespread damage associated with the transfer to Roman power: a single palatial house complex seems to have been razed. Gortyn seems to have been pro-Roman and was rewarded by being made the capital of a province that at times joined Cyrenaica to Crete.
Gortyn was the site of the largest Christian basilica on Crete, the Basilica of Ayios Titos dedicated to Saint Titus]] the first Christian bishop in Crete, to whom Paul addressed one of his epistles. The church was begun in the 5th century.
Crete continued to be part of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine empire, a quiet cultural backwater, until it fell into the hands of the Arabs in 824. The archbishop of Gortyn (Cyril) was assassinated and the city so thoroughly devastated it was never reoccupied. Candia, a city built by the Arabs was made capital of the island instead.
In the 10th century Nicephorus Phocas reconquered Crete for the Byzantines, who held it until 1204, when it fell into the hands of the Venetians at the time of the Fourth Crusade. The Venetians retained the island until 1669, when the Ottoman Turks took possession of it.
The standard survey for this period is I.F. Sanders, An archaeological survey and Gazetteer of Late Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Crete 1982
Medieval and Ottoman Crete
Crete then became a formidable nest of pirates and defied all the efforts of the Byzantine sovereigns to recover it until 960, when it was reconquered by Nicephorus Phocas.
In the partition of the Byzantine empire after the capture of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, Crete was eventually acquired by Venice which held it for more than four centuries.
During the 17th century Venice was gradually pushed out of Crete by the
Ottoman Empire, with most of the island lost in 1669 after the fall
of Candia. The last Venetian outposts on the island were lost in 1718,
and Crete was a part of the Ottoman Empire for the next two centuries.
The Greek War of Independence began in 1821 and Cretan participation was extensive. The Turks responded by seeking the aid of the Pasha of Egypt, and brutal campaigns crushed the island's resistance. In 1832 a Greek state was established which, however, did not include Crete and the island passed to the Egyptians, in acknowledgement of their assistance.
Modern Crete
Aided by volunteers and reinforcements from free Greece, the "Great Cretan Revolution" began in 1866 and the rebels scored a series of victories. However, as more Turkish forces landed on the island, reprisals, usually against non-combatants, became common.
Finally, after years of struggle, the Great Powers (Britain, France, Italy and Russia) decided that Turkey could no longer maintain control and intervened with the expulsion of Turkish forces in 1898 which led to the formation of the independent Cretan Republic.
Finally, in 1913, union with Greece was realised. Under the Treaty of London, Sultan Mehmed V relinquished his formal rights to the island. In December, the Greek flag was raised at the Firkas fortress in Chania, with Venizelos and King Constantine in attendance, and Crete was unified with mainland Greece.
In World War II, Crete provided the setting for the Battle of Crete (May 1941), wherein German invaders, especially paratroops, drove out a British Empire force commanded by General Sir Bernard Freyberg.
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