Minoans Came From Europe, Not North Africa, Ancient DNA Suggests

By Ewen Callaway When the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos on Crete in 1900, he saw the vestiges of a long-lost civilization whose artefacts set it apart from later Bronze-Age Greeks. The Minoans, as Evans named them, were refugees from Northern Egypt who had been expelled by invaders from the South about 5,000 years ago, he claimed. Modern archaeologists have questioned that version of events, and now ancient DNA recovered from Cretan caves suggests that the Minoan civilization emerged from the early farmers who settled the island thousands of years earlier. The Minoans flourished on Crete for as many as 12 centuries until about 1,500 bc, when it is thought to have been devastated by a catastrophic eruption of the Mediterranean island volcano Santorini, and a subsequent tsunami.

They are widely recognized as one of Europe's first 'high cultures', renowned for their pottery, metal-work and colourful frescoes. Their civilization fuelled Greek myths such as the story of the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull creature who lived in a labyrinth. Evans was among the first to explore Crete after it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1898. His team discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos, and uncovered artefacts very different from those of Bronze Age Greece, including thick-walled circular tombs that bore a resemblance to those of ancient North Africans, and still-undeciphered scripts dubbed Linear A and Cretan hieroglyphs. Others have suggested that the Minoans originated in the Middle East, modern-day Turkey or the Mediterranean. Genetic studies of modern Cretans have come to little consensus.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

The science of Dna the great equalizer, this controversy like the article states was an ongoing debate going back over a century now it has been settled,cultural links instead of biological links. Below is another related article about the Minoans.

Minoans Warlike? Ancient Crete Civilization Not As Peaceful As Once Thought, Archaeologist Says

By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer Published: 01/15/2013 01:33 PM EST on LiveScience

The civilization made famous by the myth of the Minotaur was as warlike as their bull-headed mascot, new research suggests. The ancient people of Crete, also known as Minoan, were once thought to be a bunch of peaceniks. That view has become more complex in recent years, but now University of Sheffield archaeologist Barry Molloy says that war wasn't just a part of Minoan society — it was a defining part. "Ideologies of war are shown to have permeated religion, art, industry, politics and trade, and the social practices surrounding martial traditions were demonstrably a structural part of how this society evolved and how they saw themselves," Molloy said in a statement.

The ancient Minoans Crete is the largest Greek isle and the site of thousands of years of civilization, including the Minoans, who dominated during the Bronze Age, between about 2700 B.C. and 1420 B.C. They may have met their downfall with a powerful explosion of the Thera volcano, which based on geological evidence seems to have occurred around this time. The Minoans are perhaps most famous for the myth of the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull that lived in the center of a labyrinth on the island.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Like we once thought about the Mayans that the Minoans were rich and peaceful their ultimate undoing was by a volcanic eruption and tsunami of epic Atlantean proportion turned out to be wrong also, at least the peaceful traders image part. many were fooled by the lack of walls which would suggest fear of an enemy but like the article said the topography provided for It's own defense.

Well i'm just about to put together a thread on what i find intriguing about the Minoans, no conflict of interests so watch out for that.

It should perhaps be pointed out here though that in coming from the core Neolithic region, that is to say Anatolia and Northern Syria the Minoans were from Asia Minor, not Europe

As for a Minoan Golden Age, i'd go along with that, perhaps even the idealized society of Atlantean lore as in the Thera hypothesis, needs to be understood why this was.

Originally posted by Kantzveldt
Well i'm just about to put together a thread on what i find intriguing about the Minoans, no conflict of interests so watch out for that.

It should perhaps be pointed out here though that in coming from the core Neolithic region, that is to say Anatolia and Northern Syria the Minoans were from Asia Minor, not Europe

As for a Minoan Golden Age, i'd go along with that, perhaps even the idealized society of Atlantean lore as in the Thera hypothesis, needs to be understood why this was.

edit on 20-5-2013 by Kantzveldt because: (no reason given)

I honestly believe that the Minoans are the best candidate for the Atlanteans hope you throw in some great pic of their art and architecture in your up coming thread.

Aren't hittites from europe as well? So it's not unusual for european people to settle further south and build an empire. Also hittites disappeared without a trace taking their treasures with them. I'm wondering could they have been the minoans? Not sure of the time frames thought.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
Aren't hittites from europe as well? So it's not unusual for european people to settle further south and build an empire. Also hittites disappeared without a trace taking their treasures with them. I'm wondering could they have been the minoans? Not sure of the time frames thought.

No technically they were from Anatolia on the Asian side of the Black sea however they did share language origins with Europeans called Indo-European,so they had to have some connection. plus the Minoans came on the scene long before they did going back to old Kingdom times in Kemet AKA Egypt.

Very interesting and thanks for posting you do realise though that some folk here are going to be unable to process the fact you are supporting the Minoans being "Europeans" rather than "Africans" and be all like "but.. but..but"?

reply to post by Spider879

The science of Dna the great equalizer, this controversy like the article states was an ongoing debate going back over a century now it has been settled,cultural links instead of biological links.

Excellent story and observations!

I am constantly amazed how quickly mainstream science sometimes fires up a bandwagon being pulled not by a team of horses but by a theoretical gaggle of ducks. Then it happens that something like this DNA sampling comes along and the wheels of their little red wagon spin off and there are a million books that require a fast rewrite, lol.

Great post!

Originally posted by skalla
Very interesting and thanks for posting

you do realize though that some folk here are going to be unable to process the fact you are supporting the Minoans being "Europeans" rather than "Africans" and be all like "but.. but..but"?

Lol there shouldn't be any but.. buts !! if that is where the evidence points to, I said this before I don't remember if I said it here on this site that these areas of study. Archaeology,History,Anthropology are subject to change with the next spade full of dirt the discovery of a new inscription or the mapping or tightening of new Dna findings.one should be prepared to unlearn all that they previously thought they knew these are soft sciences unlike Mathematics..

reply to post by Spider879

i couldnt agree more dude, just referencing some of the prejudices and percieved reputations i see knocking around the place

DNA from teeth now that is interesting, teeth are much harder then bone so would seem like a good source to extract DNA from,they never said what haplogroup though. Scythians can be found practically all over the planet, those "mummies" in china are Scythians, also they were in Ireland, Russia, Anatolia, India blah blah...they must have liked traveling. Wouldn't surprise me if these Minoans were in some way related to Scythians.

The Greek geneticist and his colleagues at the American University analyzed 37 samples of mitochondrial DNA, which date back 3,700 years and were extracted from the teeth of the skeletons excavated from a tomb near the city of Lassithi. The scientists compared the samples with those of 135 other populations from ancient Europe and Anatolia as well as modern time populations. The analysis showed more similarities in the genetic material of the Minoans with European tribes rather than with Libyans, Egyptians, Sudanese and Arabs from the Middle East.

greece.greekreporter.com...

reply to post by LUXUS

DNA from teeth now that is interesting, teeth are much harder then bone so would seem like a good source to extract DNA from,they never said what haplogroup though. Scythians can be found practically all over the planet, those "mummies" in china are Scythians, also they were in Ireland, Russia, Anatolia, India blah blah...they must have liked traveling. Wouldn't surprise me if these Minoans were in some way related to Scythians.

Not so sure about the Scythian part, their material culture seems vastly different Scythians were into horses and reindeers Minoans were into the Bull Cults although they could have picked it up from Anatolians, Levantines or Kemitians aka Egyptians,the Minoans were comfortable at sea, Scythian like folks seemed more at home on the stepps.the Minoans were farmers Scythians were nomadic hunters..naaw too many differences IMO.

This is a little bit misleading...I think. It has long been suspected that Crete was settled from Asia Minor, due to the tidal paths, and that farming spread into Europe also from Asia Minor. This DNA study merely confirms that, and as would be expected, the initial peoples of Crete share the same DNA as the first farmers of Europe.

What Evans and perhaps more pointedly Leonard Cottrell, suggested, is that an already inhabited Crete was subsequently settled by people from an established civilisation, who imported their administration system with them, establishing a trading post that eventually governed the island, as well as dominating the med sea trade as a whole. It has also been proposed due the temporal nature of these subsequent settler's ties to Crete, that they simply returned to 'from whence they came' in the period when the volcano was showing signs of erupting, simply relocating their base of operations as directors of trade, and leaving the indigenous peoples to be buried under several feet of volcanic ash or even earlier, in response to the violent migrations of the Sea Peoples.

Although the study does confirm the established theory that Crete was first settled via Asia Minor, it doesn't really answer the question of who or what precipitated the creation of the Minoan Kingdom.

It seems the first settlers arrived at the same time period Europe gets manhandled, by an animal with the ability and intelligence to change what nature has provided, making the first European farmers also the first landscape architects.

Nobody can ever get that chance again, to mess up perfectly good lands for plants and animal life since it first started to be a habitat, to make it benefit human demands and personal sick wishes cause it's possible.

They were as smart as we are now... Would they even took a moment and think about what this path of human interference might lead to ? Or even into the hands of those that lost their respect for where they came from ?

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


The early Europeans had to change the landscape in order to live. Ie. cutting down trees to grow crops and for pastures for their domesticated animals. All of which were crucial to their lively hoods considering that Europe isn't tropical so they didn't have the luxury to go hunt or find food whenever they wanted. Food is scarce during the winter months. Hence, growing as much and harvesting as much as possible to be able to sustain themselves during the tough seasons. If you ask me, the early Europeans were very ingenious. The same could be said about the ancient Indians with their working "toilet" systems.

Originally posted by kimish
reply to post by Sinter Klaas

 

The early Europeans had to change the landscape in order to live. Ie. cutting down trees to grow crops and for pastures for their domesticated animals. All of which were crucial to their lively hoods considering that Europe isn't tropical so they didn't have the luxury to go hunt or find food whenever they wanted. Food is scarce during the winter months. Hence, growing as much and harvesting as much as possible to be able to sustain themselves during the tough seasons. If you ask me, the early Europeans were very ingenious. The same could be said about the ancient Indians with their working "toilet" systems.

edit on 20-5-2013 by kimish because: (no reason given)

Well while they did not live in the tropics European first farmers lived in the temperate zone of north Med,so I don't think it was much more difficult than folks living in the south Med or Mesopotamia but the Kemites had it easiest all that rich supply of quality mud from the Ethiopian high lands stuff just grew.

reply to post by kimish


Of course. No bad words about the dead. It takes a leap of extraordinarily thinking, to invent something new, without anything ever created and imagined to start with.

At the time though Europe was green and filled with all you can eat. If you know hot to get it.
My guess is that they found a place to stay, and without the need to gather food. The numbers of people that can live from farming, the time that was open to think and do other stuff, they are what made people start to specialize and evolve new ways and means for all to learn.

Still... I'm told that they were similar to us. Including our brain and how we use it.
They didn't look to the horizon with a blank mind, cause we need to invent all and imagine it.
If they are like us, they must have a similar life as we have. They would keep themselves challenged, not to get bored. They might have practiced their skillz with the missus a lot of course, but even that won't be more then a tiny drop of stuff to think off, with all the power to create whatever in reach of the imagination.

Less complex but with a lot more to fill the blanks with I guess... Still never aware of what could be, never even a thought anywhere near the same stuff we think.
.
I probably will never know, but what I do know is that when you can learn to build a space ship, and you can use all of this potential at farming and making life easier.
They must have had a great time.

Several months ago I came across this awsome blog on the minoan colonization of the iberian pennisula.
It is full of good stuff and puts the history of the med and Europe in general, in perspective.
The minoans controlled the flow of copper and bronze into the eastern med and agean, I light of this I believe the minoan empire was more of a trade associatiin, along the lines of the Hanseatic league, that was based on the very same trade routes.
For some reason the blog is dodgey about cutting and pasting so ill just post a link , but I highly recomend reading it.
frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com...

reply to post by Spider879


This is a great disinformation tactic, the thread should be labelled as such.

The Minoan samples possessed 21 different mitochondrial DNA markers, including 6 unique to Minoans and 15 common in modern, Bronze Age and Neolithic European populations. None of the Minoans possessed mitochondrial markers similar to those of present-day African populations.

They do not have a clue where they are from, but someone had a theory and they labelled the article as such. It is a classic disinformation ploy.

The truth as should be stated in the title, is that the Minoans are a remnant of the Atlantians, a lost worldwide peoples who was 12,000 years ago and back.