Atlantis, the Printing Press and the Mystery of Minoan Civilization

Palace at Knossos

      
"Now in the island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of Kings of great and marvelous power which held sway over all the island and many other islands."

                                -Plato from Timaeus the year 360 BCE

        For two years the team of Italian archaeologists has been laboring in the hot sun on the island of Crete in the middle of the Aegean Sea.  Though the waters surrounding the island are a deep and lovely blue the heat is oppressive, the work is tedious and the local inhabitants are suspicious at best and openly hostile at their worst.

It is July 1908 and the team has been excavating palace sites across the island, trying to piece together information and artifacts about a little known, but apparently much advanced civilization--the Minoans.

The Minoans flourished during the Bronze Age roughly the years 3000-1100 BCE, primarily located on the large island of Crete near mainland Greece, but also scattered across many of the smaller islands that dot the Aegean Sea as well.

In 1908 very little is known about the Minoan Civilization.  Today, it could be argued that the Minoans given their elaborate architecture, vibrant mosaic artwork and enduring mythological tradition are the grandfather’s of modern western culture and civilization but the Italian archaeological team led by Luigi Pernier, doesn’t yet have a true understanding of the depth and complexity of Minoan Culture.

On July 3, 1908 Luigi Pernier and his team make a discovery that will help to give Minoan Civilization its rightful place in history.

Minoan civilization was focused around two main palace complexes on the island of Crete.  The first, and most famous of these palace sites, is Knossos.  Knossos is home to the most elaborate of all Minoan structures and to the most beautiful examples of Minoan artwork.  

All that was known about Knossos, or the Minoans in general, prior the turn of the twentieth century came from the tales and traditions of Greek mythology until an English archaeologist named Sir Arthur Evans, a believer that there was a factual basis behind the stories of Greek mythology unearthed the palace complex at Knossos on the island of Crete.  Before the arrival of Evans and his fervent belief that many Greek myths, in fact, had a basis in truth most historians doubted that there even had been a flourishing Bronze Age culture located anywhere in the Greek Isles at all.

In Greek mythology Crete is the home of the tyrant king Minos who is a son of Zeus and the mortal woman Europa from which the name of the continent of Europe is derived.  Minos breaks an oath to the God of the sea, Poseidon, and out of vengeance Poseidon causes Minos’ wife to fall in love with and lust after a bull.

Born of this affair is a terrifying half man half bull creature called the Minotaur which according to mythology resides underground in a labyrinth or maze beneath the palace of Knossos.  As the story goes, every year seven girls and seven boys are sacrificed in the labyrinth to the Minotaur until the Greek hero Theseus comes along, kills the minotaur in the labyrinth, and is then rescued from the maze by Minos’ daughter Ariadne.

In searching and excavating on the island of Crete at the turn of the twentieth century, Sir Arthur Evans named the culture he discovered Minoan after this legend regarding the mythical King Minos.  Evans discovered the remains of a large palace, the traditional residence of King Minos and the largest palace located on the island of Crete at the site of Knossos.

Interestingly enough, there are no signs whatsoever of fortifications around or near the site of Knossos.  In fact, it would appear that the Minoans were a peace loving people who gave almost no thought to war or to self-defense based upon the fact that little of their artwork depicts any scenes of struggle other than boxing and their is no evidence of the building of forts or walls anywhere on the island that dates from the time of the Minoans.

Little is known about the religion of the Minoans, but surprisingly, the palace complex at Knossos is dotted with artwork and frescoes depicting bulls, which would indicate that perhaps the mythology behind the minotaur predates ancient Greek civilization and comes to us from a much earlier oral or literary tradition.

Minoan depiction of Minotaur

It is what Luigi Pernier and his team found on July 3, 1908 that makes an older literary tradition focused around Minoan culture seem not only possible but probable.

Digging in a temple base on the south tip of the island in the smaller palace complex of Phaistos beneath layers of ash and rubble that seem indicative of some natural catastrophe such as an earthquake preceded by a volcanic eruption, Pernier comes across a disc of fired clay.

The disc is covered front and back with strange but distinct signs.  There are 45 individual signs, like hieroglyphs  covering each side of the disc and over 200 distinct segments to the disc or tokens that would seem to comprise structures not unlike sentences.  The disc was created by pressing symbols into the clay and then baking the tablet forming what would appear to be a primitive type of printing press. 

Is this a precursor to Johannes Guttenberg’s modern printing press of the fifteenth century AD?  Is what Luigi Pernier and his team discovered on July 3, 1908 proof that an advanced civilization in Europe, the Minoans, was communicating through the printed word in the form of books or mass produced tablets thousands of years before anyone had previously thought possible?

Maybe.  Even to this day there is some doubt about the authenticity of the Phaistos Disc. As a result of his find Luigi Pernier was vaulted into fame and became the leading Italian archaeologist of his day. Though the clay itself has been dated by some researchers to approximately the year 1800 BCE, much of the Minoan script still remains undecipherable, and corroborating works or other written evidence remains scarce despite over one-hundred plus years of continued archaeological excavation and study.  

However, it should be noted that at the time, Sir Arthur Evans, the man who believed enough in mythology to discover the Minoan Civilization in the first place, stood firmly behind the authenticity of the Phaistos Disc and spent many years attempting to decipher it and prove that it was an ancient predecessor to the modern day printing press.

If the Phaistos disc is real and is proof of an early European printing press then why isn’t printed material, whether on clay or some form of ancient paper, more prevalent?

The Phaistos Disc

The mystery of the scarcity of Minoan script may just be one of the many mysteries that the Minoans have  left to us about their culture and about who they truly were.  However, more recently in 1998 in his book Guns, Germs and Steel, author Jared Diamond gives us a theory that is both plausible and persuasive.

In his book Mr. Diamond argues that the Minoans did create an ancient form of printing press as represented by the Phaistos Disc but that the idea of mass-produced printed material was so technologically far ahead of its time that the Minoans themselves couldn’t quite see the true purpose or utility behind what they had created.

Jared Diamond’s theory is possible but there are other, more tantalizing theories about the Minoans, that could be said to be just as plausible.

Perhaps, we have all been better acquainted with the Minoans for the last 2500 years than we have even realized because, thanks to Plato, we have been referring to the Minoan Civilization as Atlantis.

Santorini, an island called Thera by the ancient Greeks, is a volcanic island near Crete that is now covered by thick layers of Ash and pumice stone.  In the 1960’s Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos, through excavation on Santorini discovered that a volcanic eruption occurring around the year 1600 BCE had buried a flourishing civilization Thera, and other nearby islands, under dozens of feet of ash.

A volcanic eruption on Santorini in or around the year 1600 BCE would likely have done much to nearly destroy the peace loving and artistic civilization of the Minoans located on the island of Crete.  Such a natural disaster would have blotted out the sun and left ash falling from the sky like rain.  Within weeks famine would have set in, economic collapse would have followed closely on the heels of starvation and disease leaving the Minoans vulnerable to attack from warlike neighbors like the Mycenaeans located to the north on the Greek mainland.  As a result of such a disaster, within a very short amount of time, the Minoans and their culture and all of their technological advancements could easily have been lost and nearly forgotten about. 

In his Socratic dialogue Timaeus the great Greek philosopher Plato describes Atlantis thus: 

“The records speak of a vast power...a power that sprang forth from beyond, from the Atlantic Ocean.  For at the time this ocean was passable, since it had an island in it that was larger than Libya and Asia.”

Was this island larger than Libya and Asia meant to represent the island of Crete before the eruption of the volcano located on Santorini?  Maybe.  Is it possible that the culture and advanced civilization that Plato in his dialogue labelled “Atlantis” is really meant to represent the advanced culture and civilization of the Minoans as embodied in the technology of the Phaistos Disc?

Just like Sir Arther Evans nearly one hundred and twenty years ago made his firm belief in the factual basis for Greek mythology become a reality when he discovered the Minoan palace complex at Knossos, perhaps, one day a similar searcher with a firm belief in the reality of a legend will change our viewpoint on the truth behind the mythic continent of Atlantis.

Ancient ruins on the island of Santorini