Remember Minoans think of themselves as royals - untouchable... and vicious. So many writers still write crap about the Minoans/Cretans, and just guess👇

What aspect of Minoan society, particularly their apparent lack of fortifications, would have most surprised a visitor from a classical Greek city-state?

I seriously doubt that “the lack of fortification” would have surprised a visitor from classical Greece. You see, it isn’t true; there were walled Minoan sites. In addition, all of them had “defensive” constructions such as bastions, guard-houses (usually freestanding closed military fort-like structures, with great importance for the monitoring and the defense of a specific region), or modifications of access systems.

The remains of the wall of the inner line fortification at Gournia. It was 135m long, 2–2.5 to 3.5m high. Image credit: Tomas Alusik - Profile on Academia.edu

Of course, our visitor would be shocked by many aspects of Minoan life.

The Greek visitor/time-traveler would first and foremost look for the Agora. The Agora was the gathering place where shops, tavernas, and public services were in all the Greek city-states, basically the center of city life. So imagine his shock when he’s told that all of this was actually concentrated inside the palace, and that trade was more or less under state control. (Now, how he’d manage to communicate with the Minoans is another story!) I added the BOLD!

Instead of this:

The Agora of ancient Athens in the 4th century BCE. The stoas were something like the modern malls: 1. Square Peristyle, 2. Poikile Stoa, 3. Altar of the 12 Gods, 4. Royal Stoa, 5. Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, 6. Temple of Patroos Apollo, 7. Temple of Hephaestos, 8. Old Bouleuterion, 9. New Bouleuterion, 10. Tholos, 11. Southwest Fountain House, 12. The Aiakeion, 13 South Stoa, 14 Southeast Fountain House, 15 the Mint.

He found this:

Plan of the palace at Knossos. Image from Art and Visual Culture: Prehistory to Renaissance

As for the palace itself, it’s like nothing he’s ever seen before: a sprawling, multi-story maze, full of staircases and openings, inside and out. Complex, yes, but not chaotic. The Greek time-traveler quickly learned to follow the central strip of the royal road to reach the central court and which staircase to climb to end up exactly where he wanted. And if he happened to be an architect by trade, you can bet he’d be taking notes on the Minoans’ clever design solutions.

And yet, despite all these amazing achievements, these people had no idea what coins were. What the hell!

The royal road of Knossos. You reach the central court if you follow the strip in the middle and notice the pavements!

One thing that really threw him off was women. They were everywhere, talking to everyone, with their faces uncovered, dressed (even the priestesses!) in outfits that, back in his city, only prostitutes would wear. His embarrassment turned into shock when he found out some of them were merchants and government officials. Totally crazy stuff! Definitely not the kind of thing his wife should ever find out about!

If a woman in the classical era had shown up dressed like that, it would’ve caused a huge scandal.

Our Greek traveler, though, got lucky: he happened to be in Crete at just the right time to catch the ceremonies in honor of the Great Goddess. They were spectacular, especially the contests. But what really blew his mind were the taurokathapsia (bull-leaping), done by men and women. Compared to that, the apobates race looked like kids’ games( the rider (the apobates) had to leap off a chariot in full armor while it was moving, run alongside it, and then jump back on. It was part of the Great Panathenaic Games in Athens.)

Base for a dedication depicting an apobates race. It is on display in the Acropolis Museum.

But the scene he stumbled upon the next day made his heart sink. A group of priests was dragging a young Minoan, hands tied behind his back, into the temple. There was no doubt about the outcome; it was a human sacrifice. Of course, the traveler knew the myths about young Athenians being thrown to the Minotaur, but his mind just couldn’t reconcile how such a refined society could hold on to such brutal customs. Maybe, after all, his own homeland wasn’t so bad. At least there, they didn’t feed their children to the gods, except, of course, to Ares, god of war, out on the battlefield…”Everything around us keeps changing, but somehow it all stays the same”, like that modern Greek song says.

Graphic representation of the Anemospilia sanctuary (according to SHAW and SAKELLARAKIS). Unfortunately, our traveler guessed right. The man on the altar was probably sacrificed. The other persons (probably priests and priestesses) were killed by an earthquake.

footnotes

Fortifications of Prehistoric Crete: The Current State of the Research

Anemospelia Archaeological Site

SOURCE: https://qr.ae/pCGwi9