Knossos , Europe ’s first great city , did n’t simply disappear at the end of the Bronze Age as previously thought . Instead , it reclaim and thrived as a center of swap despite having lost its property as a hub of world exponent .
Ancient Greek stories refer to a mighty city on the island of Crete named Knossos . It was here that the heroTheseuswas supposed to have killed the minotaur and fly the coop the inner ear . The floor of a half - man / half - bull monster is obviously myth to us , but to the ancient Greeks it became mixed with real memories of a clock time when Crete dominated the neighborhood , express tribute from ring peoples .
In 1878 , the site of an ancient city on the north coast of Crete was discovered . Excavations in the early 20th century make grounds that this was Knossos , including the castle that was at the heart of the Minoan civilization . Now , grounds has been presented to theannual meetingof the Archaeological Institute of America and Society for Classical Studies that the city lasted much longer than had antecedently been recognized .
The Minoan civilization fell around 1500 BCE , but Knossos was fill by Mycenaean Greeks and survived as a center of power , although without its premature hegemony .
In 1200 BCE , near the end of the Bronze Age , Knossos was intend to have been abandoned . The fall of such a great metropolis has been attributed to an seism or invade armies , but the consequence coincided with what is known as theBronze Age Collapse , which saw violent disruption throughout the eastern Mediterranean . The Romans subsequently built a urban center nearby , which used imagination that recall Knossos on its coin , and afterwards nearby cities also looked to the location ’s glorious past tense .
harmonise toDr . Antonis Kotsonasof the University of Cincinnati , however , there is more to this metropolis ’s story than the familiar tarradiddle of supremacy and crash . Kotsonas is part of the Knossos Urban Landscape Project , which has lento collected Iron Age relics from the area around Knossos itself . He reason out that the Iron Age Knossos was three times as expectant as previously believed , and a center of great wealth .
“ No other internet site in the Aegean full stop has such a range of imports , ” Kotsonas say in astatement , with metals , jewellery , and pottery from not only nearby Greece and Egypt but the Sardinia and the westerly Mediterranean – a Brobdingnagian distance by the standards of the solar day .
Prosperous as Knossos may have been in the early Iron Age , it was sufficiently outshone and disappeared from history . Kotsonassaidfar more geographic expedition is required to understand the nature of the city in its last earned run average but , “ Even at this early stage in elaborated analysis , it appears that this was a nucleate , rather densely occupied small town prolong over the core of the Knossos valley . ”
Kotsonas ' public lecture was part of a colloquium at the group discussion , where he said the findings emphasize the importance of maintain undiscovered areas of what is now a popular holidaymaker site .
