The Lost Empire of Atlantis Read online

  Just like the bees, the Minoans’ wealth was founded on ingenuity and hard work. That incredible wealth, along with the extraordinarily creative skills of its people, must have given Crete a mythical aura, a status and standing that lived on well after the Minoans themselves.

  What was certain was that the Cretans had possessed levels of technology we can hardly credit; after the loss of the Minoan civilisation, humanity had to wait for centuries to regain these skills and technologies, eventually rediscovering them in stages many hundreds of years after the birth of Christ. No wonder that, for the ancient Greeks, this magical land had reached the status of myth.

  The key to understanding the Minoans seemed, at least on one level, to be the seals. What did they have written on them? Were they navigation instructions? Maps of the stars? Perhaps they were merely ownership details. However they had achieved it, both the skill and the knowledge of the Cretan goldsmiths were astounding. Some of the minutely inscribed seals seemed to show stellar constellations, like Orion. There was a growing conviction in my mind: the Minoans must have understood navigation and they must have used the stars to navigate. Whether or not they became successful world explorers would depend on just how well they could do it.20

  Back at the hotel, I pored over images of the seal stones and then at the Phaestos Disc, back and front. I counted the pictographs on the disc and wondered if you could arrange the symbols into groups and categorise them. Did it show us something profound? Of course, I realised the disc could simply detail something prosaic – a list, perhaps. Why was the notion of the spiral – seen everywhere on Minoan pottery and jewellery and now here on the maze-like surface of the disc – so important?

  In the last century scholars had managed to crack truly fiendish languages like Ugaritic. Even the language that followed Linear A on Crete, the so-called ‘Linear B’ adopted by the Mycenaeans, had been partly translated: but not this. The Phaestos Disc had eluded everyone who had ever tried to decipher it, while the seals told a story of a civilisation of unparalleled invention and technical ability. I was fascinated, but my lack of expertise was frustrating.

  Our modern world had unearthed ancient tokens like these seals and the Phaestos Disc, tools that could potentially unlock the mysteries of the ancient Minoan world. We held the keys to the puzzle; we just couldn’t turn them in the locks.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE MISSING LINK

  The Bronze Age is named after a copper alloy. It was a miraculous material. Suddenly, metalworkers could change rock to metal, using the magic of fire. Today, world politics is dominated by areas rich in oil, uranium and knowledge. Many thousands of years ago, metal was as important for the development of wealth and power as energy supply and information are today.

  It is not known quite when, or where, some unknown genius discovered that an amalgam of nine parts of copper to one part of tin would produce the metal we now call bronze. The discovery revolutionised the technology of the world. Bronze was sharp-edged, strong and durable. The texture and strength of this material makes it ideal for creating effective weapons and astoundingly flexible tools. This precious metal – for then, it truly was precious – totally transformed the world. It was essential to advancing technology and crucial to the development of civilisation. It gave man a modern material – an alloy – that could be moulded and beaten into any shape.

  The new knowledge was a long time spreading. In countries where there were no native copper or tin mines, spears and swords could only be obtained through trade or conquest. They were of fabulous, untold value. The owners of bronze swords, bronze-tipped arrows and bronze shields would have seemed well-nigh invincible, a fact which must lie behind the many ancient legends and myths that concern magic swords and armour.

  Suddenly, Bronze Age man possessed hard, corrosion-resistant metallic tools – shovels, axes, chisels and hammers. For the first time in the history of the world, with the free time bought by this helpful technology man was able to create products of pure luxury in large amounts, such as sumptuous jewellery. The Minoans excelled at jewellery production. They also had the sharp saws they could make from bronze to thank for their ability to build durable ships of carved hardwood. These true, all-weather ships could trade these new luxury goods with Egypt and across the Mediterranean.

  And let’s not forget weapons. While metals such as gold and silver could finance a war, the magical new metal of bronze could win one. The historian Herodotus talks about ‘the men of bronze’ who ‘sold their fighting skills to the pharaohs of Egypt’.21 We don’t know who those ‘men of bronze’ were, but we know with certainty that until the destruction that so transformed life on Crete, a busy sword-manufacturing workshop was exporting its products throughout the Aegean, the Dodecanese area and on the Greek mainland.22 Those bronzesmiths did some of their finest work when it came to weapons technology.

  Modern bronze uses other metals like zinc and manganese as an alloy. In very early times bronzes were made using arsenic. Arsenic bronzes have an advantage over pure copper in that they require a lower firing temperature, although they do not cast as well. But dealing with a deadly poison has its drawbacks: in the early days of bronze, smiths could not have lived very long to forge another day. Hephaestus, the god of technology and metalworking, held so important a place in the Greek pantheon of gods that he was generally portrayed as the son of Zeus and Hera – king and queen, as it were, of the gods. Yet he is also ugly and lame, a grotesque figure in many ways, and this folk memory could well reflect the effect that working with arsenical copper would have had on an individual.

  When the French Emperor Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, it turned out that he had been poisoned. But his death was almost certainly not an act of murder, despite the former dictator’s numerous enemies. It was totally accidental. The mystery of why the Corsican died was finally solved when it was worked out that arsenic had been used to ‘fix’ the vivid green colour of the wallpaper of his genteel island prison. Arsenic can cause multi-organ failure and necrotic destruction of the body cells. Arsenic poisoning leads to central nervous system dysfunction and eventually death.

  So the bronze that set the age of metals alight is a combination of 10 per cent tin and 90 per cent copper. Tin holds no danger for the metalsmith. That is by no means the only advantage of tin bronze. A sword forged with a combination of copper and tin, like those we had found in Heraklion, is strong but not brittle. Bronze is also malleable. It can be cast into a myriad of shapes and is therefore streets ahead of stone or wood as an easily worked and dependable material.

  Curiously, the ores of both metals were readily available in Britain, but not in Crete. The strangest thing about bronze is that its two basic ingredients are rarely found in the same place. There is no source of tin in the Aegean. Yet the Minoans used the material with lavish abandon. Arthur Evans found massive tin bronze twoman saws at Knossos; huge ceremonial swords and axes were unearthed by peasants in the 1910s in the sacred cave of Arkalochori, and sold as scrap metal in the markets; vast cauldrons were discovered at Tylissos and Zakros. Yet either trade or travel was essential to make it. The advantage of creating a secure chain of ports to support voyages to find tin would have been obvious to any ruling élite.

  As one expert, M. H. Wiener, says, bronze was so crucial that it would have been the object of intense search, planning and investment. He wrote that:

  The security, economy and hierarchy of Crete depended significantly on bronze. It seems inconceivable that . . . Minoan palace rulers would have waited passively, hoping for a new Eastern Merchant-man to arrive with copper and tin.

  Mighty Egypt, then, had no tin and only limited copper in ancient times – her mines only produced around 5 tons of copper a year. Egypt could not possibly have made the huge numbers of bronze saws required to build the pyramids unless either the raw materials or the completed bronze saws were imported.

  So how did the Egyptians actually get the raw materials? Because this all predates wides
pread written records by many millennia, deciphering the historical record is a painstaking task. Lead isotope and archaeological evidence pins early sourcing of copper ore down to the island of Kythnos; Siphnos played the same role for supplies of silver and lead. Later in the Bronze Age, larger and more economical copper deposits on the Greek mainland and Cyprus were used. After doing some of my own digging and delving, I discovered that the Troodos mountains in Cyprus held ancient copper mines. It is generally thought that Cyprus was known at the time as the kingdom of Alashiya, which seems to have been a client state of the Hyksos (15th-Dynasty Egyptian rulers). It may also have been difficult to maintain a consistent supply of an ore which was in such high demand.

  Copper was also found in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and Oman: at one point in prehistory there was also an important metals market on the island of Bahrain. Early Bronze Age tin workings have been found in Turkey’s Taurus mountains, at Kultepe. However after 1784 BC there was no tin in the Mediterranean and not nearly enough copper.

  Tin was the strategic prize. Generally the metal was only found far, far away from Crete – and there, I was sure, hung a tale. What if a sailing nation had taken the helm of the new bronze revolution? My research was all heading towards one conclusion: that the Bronze Age couldn’t have happened without the existence of world trade. Who could have been behind that trade? The island of Thera was, in the Bronze Age, a very important place, the equal of Phaestos, Alexandria, Tell el Dab’a, Tyre or Sidon: not many ports would have had as many ships as can be seen on the admiral’s frescoes.

  Again, the evidence all pointed towards this one idea: to support the thriving trade, a maritime network had existed across the Aegean. The wonderful National Archaeological Museum in Athens holds a wealth of foreign artefacts found in tombs on the Dodecanese and Cyclades islands, notably on Thera and Samos, together with pictures of Bronze Age trading ships both painted and engraved on pottery.

  That the Minoans had the ships, there was no doubt; but did their trading partners on the islands give them the scope to, in effect, rule the seas? How many Mediterranean Bronze Age ships were capable of following the Minoan ships to trade across the Mediterranean and beyond?

  Historical sources – Homer’s Odyssey and the later voyages of Pytheas the Greek – do suggest that maritime technology had been developing for many thousands of years before the Persians lost 300 ships in their famous first attempt to invade Greece (and 600 on their second attempt). Nearly 1,000 ships on both sides were involved in the second Persian assault. Although this was, of course, long after the Bronze Age, it does point to a long maritime tradition.

  In order to try to make a reasoned estimate of the possible numbers of ships that had once plied the ancient seas, I started with the number of ports which existed in the Middle Bronze Age Mediterranean at around say, 1800–1500 BC, then I multiplied those ports by the number of ships each could have built. The Aegean has more than 1,400 islands and isles –‘natural incubators for maritime technological development’, according toWiener.

  To give a couple of illustrations from these sources: Pytheas the Greek mentions Alexandria, Tyre, Sidon, Athens, Miletus, Apollonia, Odessus, Callatis, Olbia, Cumae, Nikala, Antipolis, Agde, Santa Pola and Carthage as established trading ports. We have Phoenician records for North African trade – at Ceuta, Melilla, Malaga, Algiers, Bizerte, Tunis, Tripoli and Sfax (to use later European names). The major Cretan palaces would probably each have had their own ships – Ayia Triadá, Phalasarum, Lisos, Souya, Prevéelli, Kommos, Lebèn, Myrtos, Iera Petra, Zakros, Sitei, Gournia, Malia, and Amnisos (Knossos’ port). The Cypriot Bronze Age ports were Louni, Soli, Kyrenia, Peyia, Paphos, Corium, Limassol, Amathus, Larnaca, Agia Napia, Faralimni, Famagusta, Salamis and Trachinas. Adding these to the well-known Levantine and Black Sea ports suggests there were well in excess of seventy Mediterranean ports able to build and equip ships capable of sailing the Mediterranean and perhaps further (see maps).

  How many ships would each port have built? This is almost impossible to answer. The Thera fresco shows ten ships, of which six appear to be ocean-going. For Thera to be able to have six ocean-going ships at sea at any one time, it is likely that she had at least another eighteen being built or repaired or under training – in short, a total of at least twenty-four Theran ships – let alone those docked at, or owned by, other Minoan ports.

  As Homer describes Crete providing eighty ships from seven ports for the Trojan War, we may make a conservative estimate that each port built eight. There were seventy ports capable of shipbuilding. So we have around 560 – say 500 – ships capable of sailing the Mediterranean and beyond, able to carry the critical raw materials upon which the Bronze Age relied: copper and tin.

  So the Minoans of ancient Crete had well-organised, well-planned cities; they had roads and ports; they had lighthouses; and they had ships. And those ships transported the goods they made – from honey to bronze tools, exquisite pottery and fine wine – which others wanted to buy. And on their fertile island heaven the Minoans happened to be very close to the rich markets of ancient Egypt and the Far East. Crete must have had fleets of ships sailing to Africa a full 4,000 years before Vasco da Gama and the ‘Age of Discovery’.

  Imagine a truly distant past. Crete is the magnificent crossroads linking three continents. On this strategically placed island the racial and cultural influences of Europe and Africa – and perhaps even Asia – all meet and mingle.

  CHAPTER 7

  WHO WERE THE MINOANS?

  THE DNA TRAIL

  It was another newspaper report that prompted the next stage of my enquiry. ‘Until now we only had the archaeological evidence [for Minoan genetic origins] – now we have genetic data too, and we can date the DNA.’ I read this phrase on a Tuesday, over my morning coffee. By the Friday, I was on a plane to Istanbul.

  Awoken at dawn by a deep-throated muezzin’s roar, I took a taxi to the hydrofoil in Istanbul’s old Byzantine harbour. We skimmed across the Sea of Marmara (see map) to Yalova on Turkey’s Asiatic Coast. At a spotless bus station with kiosks staffed by beautiful girls selling kebabs, tea and pastries, I discovered no fewer than 105 bays of buses, almost all of them huge and luxurious Mercedes vehicles. Grabbing one of them, I rode in air-conditioned comfort to the old Ottoman capital of Bursa, in western Anatolia.

  There was at one time a theory that the Minoans’ forebears were African. I knew that many experts disagreed: they believed that foreign settlers had arrived in Crete from southwest Anatolia, a people with a language related to that of the Hittites, further east.23

  There was a variety of evidence emerging from different fields of research. In 1961 Leonard Palmer noticed a link between Linear A and the Luvian language. In his book Minoans, Rodney Castleden argues that there may have been significant cultural contact between the Minoan and the Arzawa lands of southwestern Anatolia during the Second Temple period. The Hittite kingdoms at various points in history maintained strong contacts with Arzawa and Castleden mentions that the suffix ‘-me’, which frequently crops up in Linear A associated with deity figures, in fact means ‘lady’ in the Luvian language. All of which would fit in with the Minoans’ fervent goddess worship.

  Now that scientists are able to test genetic theories with rigour, I was here because of the new study reported by The Times. New work by an international group of geneticists showed that a section of Crete’s Neolithic population (i.e. pre-Bronze Age) did indeed go there by sea from Anatolia – modern-day Turkey. Professor Constantinos Triantafyllidis of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University had published the findings of a research group led by geneticists from Greece, the United States, Canada, Russia and Turkey. Professor Triantafyllidis said the analysis indicated that the arrival of these new peoples had coincided with a social and cultural upsurge that had led to the birth of the Minoan civilisation around 7000 BC. Specifically, the researchers connected the source population of ancient Crete to well-known Neolithic sites in Anatolia.

 
; The earliest Neolithic sites of Europe are located in Crete and mainland Greece. A debate persists concerning whether these farmers originated in neighbouring Anatolia and over the role of maritime colonisation. To address these issues 171 samples were collected from areas near three known early Neolithic settlement areas in Greece together with 193 samples from Crete. An analysis of Ychromosome hectographs determined that the samples from the Greek Neolithic sites showed strong affinity to Balkan data, while Crete shows affinity with central/Mediterranean Anatolia. Haplo-group J2b–M12 was frequent in Thessaly and Greek Macedonia while haplogroup J2a–M410 was scarce. Alternatively, Crete, like Anatolia showed a high frequency of J2a-M410 and a low frequency of J2b-M12. This dichotomy parallels archaeobotanical evidence, specifically that white bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is known from Neolithic Anatolia, Crete and southern Italy; [yet] it is absent from earliest Neolithic Greece.24

  In the darkness before dawn we passed lines of pastry shops selling glacé fruit – oranges, black grapes, red cherries, auburn apricots. A charming city built on the slopes of Mount Olympus, Bursa is called ‘The Emerald’ with good reason. To her east lies the verdant and fertile Sakarya River valley, watered by streams from the mountains.

  Forty-five minutes out of Bursa we began our ascent to the vast Anatolian plateau. The plain is lush and green with endless varieties of figs and a mass of apricots in the foothills. Flocks of black turkeys waddle beside the road. Here and there are plantations of poplars interspersed with oaks, pines and plane trees. Flocks of sheep and goats hold up the bus.

  After two hours we reached the huge, rolling plateau of central Anatolia. Once the mass of apricots in the foothills had given way to poplars and plane trees, the trees disappeared to be replaced by long rolling wheat fields stretching to eternity, interspersed every 10 miles (15 kilometres) or so by giant sugar beet factories. Lines of greenery marching away to the distant mountains told of the track of watercourses. The houses in this area are huge – far bigger than in rural Greece or Romania to the north. Clearly Anatolia could feed tens of millions of people: it had so many natural advantages – rich soil, abundant water, plentiful sunshine.