chapter eighteen: Life in Early Crete (1)

Life in Early Crete (1)

Bull-Jumpers and Sailors

We’ve been learning about people who lived near rivers:

the Egyptians, the people of the Indus Valley, the Chinese of

the Yellow River Valley, and the Assyrians and Babylonians

who lived near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Mesopo-

tamia. But if we look over in the Mediterranean Sea, we’ll

find something different—people who lived completely sur-

rounded by water. These people built their homes on an island

called Crete.

Crete is a long, skinny island in the Mediterranean Sea, a

sea that is shaped a little bit like a duck flying. Long, long ago, a

tribe called the Minoans settled down on the island of Crete.

The Minoans entertained themselves in an unusual way—

by leaping over bulls.

Imagine that you’re standing on a hard dirt floor, in the

middle of a huge arena. All around you, crowds are shouting

your name and cheering. You glance around you and see two

other people in the arena with you, a boy and a girl. None of

you have any weapons. Your hands are empty, and all you’re

wearing is a simple loose garment that allows your arms and

legs to move freely.

Suddenly a wooden door swings open in the arena wall. A

huge black bull charges out into the arena. The shouts of the

crowd get louder and louder. The bull paws the earth and shakes

his head back and forth. His horns are sharp and tipped with

gold. He swings his head towards you and sees you. He snorts

and charges straight at you.

But you don’t run away. You wait until he’s only inches

away from you—and then you grab his horns and push yourself

upwards. You somersault through the air, do a handstand on the

bull’s back, and land on your feet behind him. The girl who’s in

the arena with you is there to catch you. The crowd roars! You

turn and see your other teammate vault onto the bull. As he

lands on his feet, you grab his arm to help him stay standing.

The bull comes to a halt, confused. The three of you bow to

the crowd and then turn to do it all over again.

If you were a boy or girl in ancient Crete, you might find

yourself part of a bull-jumping team! The Minoans, who lived

on the island of Crete, trained athletic children to become

bull-jumpers. The children learned the kind of gymnastics that

children still learn today—somersaulting, balance exercises,

tumbling, and vaulting. But instead of doing their vaulting

over a piece of equipment, the students learned how to vault

over the backs of small animals such as goats—and then finally

were taught how to leap over the backs of bulls.

Bull-jumping festivals were held to honor the Minoan gods, who were thought to take the form of bulls. At the end of every bull-jumping festival, the bulls were sacrificed to the gods. During festivals, people came from all over Crete to cheer for the bull-jumpers. Bull-jumpers were treated like royalty. They were given the best food and the nicest places to live. They were showered with presents of gold, jewelry, and beautiful clothes. But bull-jumping was a dangerous sport, because bull jumpers were often killed by the bulls they were supposed to leap over. Few bull-jumpers lived past the age of twenty. The Minoans were known both for bull-jumping and for ship-building. In ancient times, the Mediterranean Sea was full of pirates. No one ruled the sea; it was controlled by bandits who sailed their small boats near the shore. These bandits attacked and robbed anyone who ventured out onto the water. Kings of the ancient world had learned how to build strong armies that fought on land. But none of them knew how to build big ships to carry their soldiers out onto the water. So the pirates roamed free on the Mediterranean Sea.

But the king of the Minoans was different. He knew that

the Minoans had to be able to sail safely across the Mediterra-

nean Sea to land, so that they could trade with other countries.

So he ordered his craftsmen to build great ships that he could

use to wipe out pirates and patrol the Mediterranean Sea.

The Minoan craftsmen learned how to build the ships. They

were the greatest ship-builders of the ancient world. And the

king of the Minoans became the first king to have a navy—an

army that knew how to fight on the water. This navy drove the

pirates out of the Mediterranean Sea and carried Minoan trad-

ers to other ancient countries so that they could buy and sell

goods. The Minoan navy became the strongest in the world.

It was so strong that the greatest palace of Crete didn’t even

have walls. No invaders could land on Crete’s shores, because

the navy kept them away.

The Minoans who lived on Crete were named after a legendary king named Minos. The Minoans told this story about Minos:

Minos was a son of the god Zeus, the chief of all the gods. But because he was half-human, Minos couldn’t live with the other gods.

Instead, he lived on Crete, in a great and beautiful palace.

But this shining palace concealed a dark secret. Below the foundation of the palace, in a maze so twisty and complicated that no one could find the way in or out, lived a horrible monster—the Minotaur. The Minotaur lived in the dark, but people whispered that he was half man and half bull—and that he ate human beings.

King Minos didn’t want to feed his own people to the Minotaur, so he ordered the nearby city of Athens to send him victims for the minotaur’s dinner. Every year, Athens had to send seven girls and seven boys to King Minos, or else (he threatened) he would destroy their city. Year after year, the Athenians sent this dreadful tribute to Minos. They put the names of all the boys and girls of Athens into a bowl, and picked out fourteen unlucky victims, then put them on a ship and took them to Crete. And year after year, the seven girls and seven boys disappeared and were never seen again.

On his eighteenth birthday, Theseus, the son of the king of Athens, decided to walk down to the seaside. The sea was blue, the sky was clear, and the sun shone. But the beach was full of weeping fathers and mothers, and the ship drawn up to the shore had black sails.

“Why does the ship have black sails?” Theseus

asked. “Why are you all crying?”

“Because our sons and daughters are going to

Crete,” one mother answered him. “They’ll be eaten

by the Minotaur, and we’ll never see them again.”

Theseus was horrified! “Why didn’t I know

about this?” he demanded.

“Because you are the prince,” another father

told him. “Your name is never put into the bowl

with the names of all the other young people of

Athens! You’ll never have to go to Crete and face

the Minotaur.”

“But that’s not right!” Theseus said. “Let me

go to Crete in the place of one of the young men.

I’ll face the Minotaur, and try to kill him. If I

succeed, we’ll put a white sail on this ship instead

of the black one, and sail home to Athens. And

no one will ever have to be sacrificed as tribute to

King Minos again."

Theseus’s father, King Aegeus, begged him not

to go. But Theseus was determined, and in the end

he had his way. He sailed to Crete with the other

victims.

On the shore of Crete, they were greeted by the

cruel King Minos himself, with his beautiful daugh-

ter Ariadne walking meekly behind him. “More

food for the Minotaur!” King Minos said, with a

great laugh. “Tonight, you’ll visit the bull-man in

the Labyrinth, his maze beneath my palace!”

He sent the fourteen victims to the prisons

of Knossos to wait for nightfall. But Ariadne had

fallen in love with Theseus at first sight. Just before

dark, she found a torch, a sword, and a ball of wool,

and crept secretly out of King Minos’s palace, down

to Theseus’s prison cell. “Theseus!” she whispered.

“Do you want to kill the Minotaur?”

“Yes!” Theseus answered. “But how can I? He

lives at the center of the Labyrinth, and no one who

gets into that maze can ever get out again.”

“I’ve brought you a torch to light your way,”

Ariadne said, “and a sword to kill the monster. Take

this ball of wool and tie it to the doorframe of the

Labyrinth. Then drop the ball and let it roll forward.

It will lead you to the center of the maze, because

the center is the lowest part of the whole Labyrinth.

You’ll find the Minotaur sleeping there. Kill it, and

then follow the string back out to the doorway.”

She unlocked the door of the cell and let Theseus

out. He did as she told him, making his way through

the dark passages of the Labyrinth with his torch

throwing strange shadows all around him and the

ball of wool rolling steadily forward in front of him.

Suddenly the ball came to a stop. Theseus held up his

torch. He was in the center of a huge underground room.

It stank of some wild animal, and bones littered

the floor. In the middle of the room, a monster—half

man and half bull—lay asleep on a golden sofa.

Theseus started forward, but the monster woke

and leaped from his sofa with a roar. They fought

together for hours, until finally Theseus struck the

Minotaur dead with his sword. Then he made his

way back up to the entrance of the Labyrinth, fol-

lowing the wool string until he saw the door to the

outside up ahead of him.

Ariadne had already released his thirteen friends.

Together, they slipped away to the harbor, boarded

their ship, and set sail for Athens. They sailed into the

harbor of Athens just as the sun rose over the city.

But in their haste, they had forgotten to put a

white sail on their ship! The people of Athens came

forward to meet them, but although some were

rejoicing, others were weeping. “Your Highness,”

one of them said to Theseus, “your father the king

was waiting for you, on top of that far distant cliff.

When the sun struck the sails of your ship, and he

saw that the sails were black, he thought that you

were dead. So he threw himself off the cliff and into

the water. You are now the king of Athens.”

Theseus was crowned king of Athens, but it

was a bitter celebration for him. He built a monu-

ment to his father in the harbor of Athens. And he

named the water around Athens the Aegean Sea,

in memory of his father Aegeus. It is still called the

Aegean Sea today.

The Mysterious End of the Minoans

What happened to the Minoans?

The Minoans of Crete disappeared, mysteriously, more than

two thousand years ago. Their civilization came to a sudden

end. All the Minoans left Crete. Why did they do this?

Although no one knows for sure, many historians think that

the Minoans left when a volcano erupted on a nearby island

called Thera. Thera looked like a small island, and people lived

on it, grew crops and raised animals in its fields. But Thera was

actually the top of an active volcano that poked up from the

Mediterranean Sea.

One day, the small island began to shake underfoot. The people

of Thera could feel constant small earthquakes. Many left the island

at once, taking all their possessions with them! But the earthquakes

died away, and the people who were still on Thera decided to stay.

They started to rebuild the walls that had fallen down.

But the volcano wasn’t finished. Bits of rock called pumice started to spray out of the volcano’s funnel. It covered the whole countryside. Smoke began to come out of the ground. The rest of the people of Thera decided to leave—and just in time! The volcano exploded, spraying lava and rock all over the island. Huge boulders were thrown up from the inside of the volcano and fell like rock bombs on top of the villages of Thera. Suddenly, the volcano collapsed inward. The sea rushed in to fill the hole, and the whole island of Thera sank beneath the sea! The island of Thera was gone forever.

The island of Crete was still there. But a tidal wave thrown up by the volcano swept its shores. Huge clouds of ash, dust and smoke floated down the wind to cover it. Ash covered the crops. Food supplies were wiped out. People could hardly breathe, because of all the dust and smoke in the air. Historians think that many of the Minoans left the island of Crete because the volcano ruined the air and land. Others stayed, but they struggled against starvation. Finally they were forced to battle their neighbors for food. Minoan cities were never strong and powerful again. Ash and dust helped bring the first great civilization of Crete to its end.

Fill in the Blank

The _____________ lived on an island called Crete.

Fill in the Blank

Crete is a long, skinny island in the __________ Sea.

Fill in the Blank

The people of Crete used to entertain themselves by leaping over ___________.

Fill in the Blank

The people of Crete had the first _____________ , an army that fights on water.

Fill in the Blank

The ____________ was a monster who was half man and half bull.

Multiple Choice

The people of Crete held their leaping festivals to honor _________.

• their king

• their gods

• their children

• nature

Multiple Choice

Why was it so dangerous to travel on the sea in ancient times?

• a. The weather made the water rough and choppy.

• b. There were no maps so the people did not know where to sail.

• c. Pirates controlled the sea.

• d. The people did not know how to make boats.

Multiple Choice

King _________ was a legendary king of Crete.

• a. Nebuchadnezzar

• Minos

• c. Aegeus

• d. Ariadne

Multiple Choice

This king fed __________ to the monster that lived in the maze beneath his palace.

• a. girls and boys from a nearby city

• b. his slaves

• bulls

• his daughters

Multiple Choice

Theseus was the prince of the nearby city, ________.

• Egypt

• Nineveh

• Knossos

• Athens

Multiple Choice

What did Theseus use to find his way through the maze so he could kill the monster?

• a map

• a mirror

• a ball of wool

• a sword

Multiple Choice

When Theseus was sailing home, his father _________.

• a. jumped off a cliff

• b. ran to the shore to meet him

• c. planned a huge celebration to welcome him home

• d. was killed by one of his enemies

Multiple Choice

Many historians believe the people left Crete because _______.

• a. a hurricane forced them to leave

• b. they were tired of living on an island

• c. a volcano erupted nearby

• d. pirates captured them

Multiple Choice

The children who participated in the leaping festivals had a safe job.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

These children were given beautiful clothes, jewelry, and gold.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

Ariadne helped Theseus kill the monster.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

The Aegean Sea was named after the father of Ariadne.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

The island of Thera sank into the sea.

• True

• False