Crete, Greece
April '07

Previous Home Next

ON TO KNOSSES, a short bus ride from Heraklion.

The Minoceans started out around 5,000 BC in clans with various identities. Eventually they melded into one ethnic group (short, black haired with big eyes) and started building the Knossos palace almost 40 centuries ago.

The ruins were covered by layers of wind-blown dust from Africa, but a local resident wanted to find out if the labyrinth mentioned in myths really existed. He found traces of what could be, but it turned out to be a much more important find. It was dug out in the mid to late 1800s by a different British archeologist, who owned the land but didn't plunder it—unlike in the Yucatan where I recently visited where archeologists took away a lot.

  h_me