Talk:Minoan civilization/Archive 1

message: let's discuss the politics section. I don't think it is appropriate to state it as fact. The evidence given is subjective. The conclusions also are based off of a lot of assumptions.
Novium 19:57, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The heading is not required. It's difficult enough to get some picture of Minoan culture without imagining "Minoan politics", an anachronous term anyway. --Wetman 20:07, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I've added a section on politics, one of the most important aspects of any sociocultural system, as any anthropological text will indicate.  I added it yesterday and came back today to find it deleted, so I inserted it again.  Hopefully it will remain this time, even though the content might change through time.  As can be seen, almost every statement has been documented.  And not just documented, but documented by direct quotations from sterling sources: professional archaeologists who have worked with and written about the Minoans -- something Wikipedia has specifically asked for in its articles. Athana 15:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

text: As it stands, the section on politics is mostly about gender. What's more, it doesn't contain any evidence about politics per se--it's conjectures about social structure based on art historical evidence. I'd rather see this (and other material on the page) combined into a women in Minoan society section, or something similar. Akhilleus 21:24, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Politics 

message: "Around 1700 BC there is a large disturbance in Crete, probably by an earthquake, although an invasion from Turkey has also been suggested. After that the population rose again, and the palaces were rebuilt, even larger than before. 
Around 1650 BC, the eruption of the volcanic island Thera caused tsunami which destroyed installations near the coasts. The sulphur dioxide emitted by the volcano also caused a decline in temperature, which resulted in poor harvests for several years. Some archeologists think that the Minoans lost their religious faith in the ability of the priests to control nature.
Around 1450, the palaces were again disturbed. Some time later, around 1420 BC, the island was conquered by the Mycenaeans. After this, most Cretan cities and palaces went into decline; Knossos remained until 1200 BC."
seems to have some redundancy, but I don't want to tackle it now. Maybe someone with more knowledge in this area can clean it up. Niteowlneils 06:01, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundant phrasing? 

message: "The Minoans' grain supply is believed to have come from farms on the shore of the Black Sea." I would love to see a source for this remarkable claim! --Yak 11:20, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bronze age grain trade?? 

message: :The Minoans had a strong influence on Mycenaean culture and this influence would have spread to the Philistines who appear in the Bible. The Philistines were settlers who arrived in Philistia prior to 1150 BC as one of the "Sea Peoples" alluded to in Jewish and Egyptian writings. Their knowledge of bronze workings made them formidable enemies to the Canaanites and Israelites settled in Israel.
The above paragraph seemed off-topic for the section on religion, where it was, and it doesn't seem to fit in any of the other sections either. I took it out for now because I couldn't figure out where to put it. —Charles P. (Mirv) 13:15, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: removed paragraph

message: Athana,
A response to the comment you inserted in one of my comments above: when you call N. Marinatos an "impeccable" source it sounds like you're saying it's impossible to disagree with her. Here's one definition I found of "impeccable": "having no flaws, perfect." Marinatos is an expert and a major figure in Minoan studies, which means that she should definitely be cited in this article. But it's certainly possible to disagree with her, which means that her position should not be the only one presented here.
I don't think any of the editors doubt that the Minoans worshipped female divinities. The problem is that the article has at various points stated that the Minoans worshipped a Goddess, or a female divinity. The distinction between singular and plural is fairly important here. If we say that the Minoans worshipped a singular goddess, or feminine divinity, we imply that the several different female divinities (or types of divinities) that we see represented in Minoan art are all aspects of the same Goddess--which is certainly a controversial idea. If you'd like a source, there are relevant papers in this volume: POTNIA. Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum 22). Liège/Austin 2001.
It's not hard to find experts who are skeptical about the idea that the Minoans had primarily or exclusively female rulers. There's a lot of recent work on state formation and social structure: Renfrew, Cherry, Driessen, etc. As far as I'm aware, none of these writers endorse the idea of female rule.
Finally, you asked: "if the Minoans are so hard to understand, why is that only female deity, female rulership, and Pax Minoica are so hotly contested on this site?" I'd say it's because the whole matriarchy=peaceful society drives a lot of popular interest in the Minoans, especially since the discussion is centered around really appealing visual art. But, you know, if we were a bit more archaeologically/anthopologically oriented, we might be discussing, and contesting other subjects: why palace-centered states emerge so suddenly in the 2nd millenium, the function of the palaces, the role of elite competition in Minoan society and economy, settlement patterns, and so on.
Or we could try to decipher the Phaistos Disc... Akhilleus 21:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nanno Marinatos, Goddess, and goddesses

message: Taken from the article
:However, many 'scholars' fail to explain why skin tones vary in color as opposed to just two colors.  There are frescoes of Minoans with even darker almost Sudanese skin tones also.  This is clearly suggestive of Egyptian/African beginings.  This is not unusual given the location of the island of Crete, plus the fact that the Egyptians used to rule the island.
Hindic and Etruscan frescoes also use varying skin tones in a non-representative way, and this article contains already too much certainty for what we really know about them, so please discuss. The writing is also a bit clunky. Snapdragonfly 06:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Skin Tones 

message: I removed this from the "sources" section, largely because the article doesn't appear to cite it:
*The Language of the Minoans by Dr. Gareth Owens
However, upon looking at that article, there are good reasons not to cite it: it's a newspaper article, not a scholarly article. Also, it is in error on at least one point: the Phaistos Disc is not in Linear A, but rather in an oddball script all its own (though it has some similarities to Cretan Hieroglyphic). Also, the author is Yannis Samatas, not Gareth Owens.
There is a larger problem with the "sources" section: it's a mess. I think it ought to look more like a bibliography, with sources alphabetized by author. Is it really necessary to cite all of these sources? It seems a bit excessive.
Update: I forgot to sign the comment, sorry! Anyway, I've alphabetized the references, and re-removed the article for the reasons noted above. If it's really necessary to have an article about the Minoan language in there, let's find a scholarly article, not a newspaper article--a good place to start might be John Younger's webpage on Linear A. Akhilleus 19:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "References" section 

message: This (now) sub-section, like the rest of the article, is a mess. I tried to clean it up a bit, but it still could use some work.
The Anemospilia section seems to be using Rutter's Dartmouth website to argue against Marinatos and Hughes' arguments against the original excavation. Yet Rutter is only relying on the original articles by the excavators, and shows no awareness of Marinatos or Hughes, so I don't think this is a valid procedure. Marinatos and Hughes are the most recent original research I've been able to locate on Anemospilia.
The reference to Geraldine Gessell is a bit cryptic at the moment. Why is the skull evidence of sacrifice? Akhilleus 08:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the clarification on the Gesell, I guess I wasn't reading very carefully. Re: Anemospilia, in case I wasn't clear, the previous version of the article made it look like Rutter was presenting new information (and arguing against Marinatos/Hughes), but as far as I see he was only presenting the account of the original excavators. So I've consolidated the information from the excavators into one paragraph, and then Marinatos' and Hughes' objections in the next. Hopefully everyone's views are presented fairly. I actually trust the original excavators *less* because they haven't gotten an official publication out in ... what, 25 years? That's not really important for this article, though. Akhilleus 07:15, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  human sacrifice 

message: An IP user put up a request to merge this article with Aegean civilization. In case someone seriously intended this, it's a bad idea. "Aegean civilization" probably shouldn't be an article at all, but it's a catch-all term for three different civilizations: Minoan, Mycenaean, and Cycladic.
The article at Aegean civilization is not very good, and I notice that there's no Cycladic civilization article. Changes need to be made, but a merge is definitely not a solution. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only things I've come across on Cycladic Civilization is the article I threw together on Frying Pans and a reference on a Santorini page...which says that it is a Minoan city, and goes with the old interpretation that "eruption induced a short period of decay in Minoan civilization, which allowed the Mycenaeans to conquer them." Anyway... I think the problem is that there is not an awful lot to (accurately, as in, make how vague it really is clear)) say without it reading like a site report. Novium 06:21, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed merge request