A modern scientific analysis of ancient stone tools challenges long-held beliefs about what caused a sea change on the island of Crete, where the first European state flourished in the Bronze Age: the ‘civilization Minoan”.
About 3,500 years ago, Crete underwent significant cultural transformations, including the adoption of a new language and a new economic system, burial customs, clothing and drinking habits, which could all be attributed to the neighboring Mycenaean Greek mainland.
Around the same time, many important sites across the island were destroyed and warrior tombs appeared in the famous palace of Knossos, leading scholars to believe for a long time that these seismic changes were the result of a Mycenaean invasion.
A new study, published online in the journal PLOS A questions this theory.
“Our results suggest a more complex picture than previously believed,” says Tristan Carter, lead author of the study and a professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University, who has conducted research in the north-central of Crete for nearly three decades.
“Rather than large-scale cultural change, our study found evidence of significant continuity after the alleged invasion. While new practices may be initiated by external forces such as invasion, migration, colonialism, or cross-cultural marriages, we also know of examples where locals choose to adopt alien habits to distinguish themselves within their communities. own company,” says Carter.
Rather than looking at things like burial, art, or dress, practices that tend to change with fashion, archaeologists have begun to look more closely at more mundane daily practices as a better insight into the real character of a culture, he explains.
For the study, the researchers analyzed a sample of tools that Bronze Age Cretans made from obsidian, a black volcanic glass that is sharper than surgical steel when freshly chipped. Vassilis Kilikoglou, director of the Demokritos national research center in Athens, used a nuclear reactor to determine the origin of the raw materials and discovered that they came from the Cycladic island of Melos.
When these findings were considered with the way obsidian blades had been crafted and used for such labors as harvesting crops, it was clear that the community had lived similarly to their predecessors over the centuries. last thousand years, which continued to be distinct from life. on the Greek mainland.
“Our analysis suggests that the population remained largely local, of Minoan origin,” Carter and Kilikoglou explain.
“This is not to say that an invasion of Crete did not take place, but that the political situation in the rest of the island at this time was more complex than previously thought with significant demographic continuity in many regions. »
Scholars believe that while local elites were strategically aligned with Mycenaean powers, as evidenced by their overt adoption of continental styles of dress, drinking, and burial, most people continued to live their lives in the same way. way than before.
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Materials provided by McMaster University. Original written by Michelle Donovan. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.