Minoan Seapower: A Brief Overwiew.

1. INTRODUCTION

Around the begining of the second millenium BC the Minoan civilization, that had been thriving in the lands Crete during the early Bronze Age, started to pay more attention to the seas of the eastern Mediterranean, initiating a period of great naval development for the minoans.

Of course, they were not the only people to sail these seas, for there were two other strong maritime empires fighting for the hegemony over these waters, the Hittites and the Egyptians, whose balance in seapower could have helped the minoans to establish their supremacy over the Aegean. [1]

Though there were other consolidated powers in the shores of the Mediterranean, the minoans came up with brilliant ship designs and they introduced new technologies in shipbuilding and navigation. As stated in [Casson 1971], such were the improvements introduced by minoan shipwrights that their designs were adopted even by the conservative Egypt and laid the foundations of the future models of Greek warships, becoming the new mainline of nautical development.

This millenium witnessed the apex of the minoan civilization that flourished thanks to the projection of their true seagoing ships, allowing the expansion of the their culture all over the Greek islands and the boost of commerce with all the three continents surrounding the mediterranean: Europe, Asia and Africa, as evidenced by many archaelogical findings [2].

In this work we are going to show how seapower was an important matter for the minoan society through some different points of view.

First, the undefended nature of Crete at the peak of the minoan civilization may be

explained by the naval power of the minoans whose influence was expanded around the islands of the Aegean by means of political, economic and military influence creating an area of peace in the core of the minoan area and a frontier of fortified islands.

Also the historical and archaelogical evidence provide us an idea of the importance of seapower for the minoans, as we can see in the many seals depicting ships and the Akrotiri frescoes where we can observe an evident war scene and possibly a procession after a naval triumph (Tilley 1976)..

Finally, their naval development and ship designs were advanced technologically and served as the model for the future warships of ancient Greece as well as for other civilizations of the Mediterranean.

2. THE CONCEPT OF MINOAN THALASSOCRACY

In the early years of the XX century Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the remains of the minoan civilization from who we knew little until that time. He proposed the idea of a mighty societe ruled by a powerful king whose fleets controlled the seas surrounding Crete, protecting his domains from the would be invaders and creating in this way a state of peace in the area which he called pax minoica [Evans 1921-1930]. But then we can pose a question is this view of the minoan world supported by the evidences we have until now?

For many years the scholars have argued about this idea of a minoan thalassocracy, that is, the development of a true martime realm with territories linked principally by the sea lanes and ruled under the power of the minoan administrative centers in Crete, and many were those who were opposed to this idea (Starr 1954-55; Buck 1962) and even consider it as a myth (Chester 1989).

Yet, after many years of debate, the proposal of a minoan thalassocracy has become increasingly important in recent years thanks to new evidences (Hagg and Marinatos 1981; Manning 1986; Wiener 1990) and there are many reasons to believe that such idea of a sea realm is quite possible. In fact, there is little room to doubt that at the peak of their development, during the LMI period, there was a minoan dominance over the Aegean that brought stability and prosperity to the area and it was clearly dependent on sea-power (Manning 1986). In the following sections we will review the various evidences in which is settled this theory.

3. THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

First of all, we have the ancient historical records of Thucydides, in his only book [Thucydides], that strongly support the idea of king Minos as the first ruler to organize a strong navy, defeat the pirates of the Aegean and stablishing colonies in the area, opening the door to a time of prosperity and wealth.

On the other hand we have the references in [Herodotus] that also agrees that Minos the Cnossian could have been one of the first rulers to have command of the sea and a succesful conqueror of the islands.

In either case, it seems that king Minos had some relation with the Carians, natives from Anatolia, that inhabited the islands of the Aegean. In both narrations we are told that

they were subdued by Minos and became his vassals as they sent ships and sailors whenever he required them.

Nevertheless, we must be cautious making assumptions based on these texts, as it is clearly stated by their authors that their narration about this subject is based in tradition and not in clear evidences, so we should validate them against the archaelogical evidence.

4. THE ARCHAELOGICAL EVIDENCE

4.1 Fortifications

The first fact that supports the idea of the minoan sea dominance is the absence of defensive fortifications in Crete at the peak of their development, the Late Minoan I (LMI) period.

During the Middle Minoan (MM) have evidence of defensive architecture in Crete, as well as probable defense walls (Hood 1961, Cadogan 1977-78) including examples in both palatial and non-palatial sites (Rutter 1997).

One of the most clear examples of minoan fortifications of this period (Fig 1) is the wall complex in Kouphota, near Ayia Photia, in which we can appreciate the remains of a huge 37-room rectangular building surrounded with walls and structures at intervals that could be towers. (Alexiou 1979)

On the contrary, at the end of MM and the beginning of LM this tendency changes, as we have no new important defensive constructions are built in Crete during this period, nor in any of the closest minoanised sites like Akrotiri [1] on Thera and Trianda on Rhodes. (Manning 1986)

However in the most distant minoan sites there is evidence of defensive structures (Barber 1981). The four most clear examples of this military architecture