Minoan Civilization

Prologue

In a lecture at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Minister of Culture of Greece Lina Mendoni, said the following:

“Today [12-07-2025] is a landmark day for our homeland, for the Greek people, for Crete, for Culture in its long historical duration. With the inscription of the Minoan Palatial Centers on the World Heritage List, the Minoan civilization, one of the most brilliant civilizations of the prehistoric Aegean, is recognized and established worldwide. The impressive architectural remains of the Minoan palatial complexes, preserved throughout Crete, are the authentic expressions of this civilization.”

Phaistos, a great Minoan city of Crete, 2nd millennium BC. Photo: Jebulon. Public Domain

 

“The palaces,” continued Mendoni, “were not only administrative and economic centers. They were centers of culture, art and technological innovation. Creations of high art and aesthetics, monumental architecture, with a developed writing and administration system, and with strong commercial and cultural contacts with the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. The emergence of Minoan civilization allows us to better understand the origins of European cultural development, establishing Crete as a cradle of civilization of global importance.”

Lina Mendoni said it correctly and with few exaggerations. Why does she consider the Minoan Period prehistoric? The palaces, the Book B, and the treasures in museums from the Minoan Period are historical, that is, they are dated. They were products of culture. The Trojan War was not a fairy tale. It happened during the Minoan Period. The great national poet and teacher of the Greeks, Homer, wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey as a hymn and history of the very important civil war between the Greeks. According to the Oracle of Delphi, Homer was the son of Telemachus, who was the son of King Odysseus of Ithaca and Polycaste, who was the daughter of King Nestor of Mycenaean Pylos in the Peloponnese (Anthology palate 14.102). Ancient Greek testimonies and astronomical research of the 21^th century tell us that the Trojan War was a historical event at the end of the 13th century^th the beginning of the 12th century^th century BC. For example, in the Odyssey (20.356-357), Homer speaks of an eclipse of the Sun in the Ionian Sea. Astronomers studied this eclipse and said that the eclipse occurred on October 30, 1207 BC or April 16, 1178 BC. I describe these events in detail in my book on Freedom (2025)

Apart from the Greeks, we do not know if other peoples inhabited the prehistoric/historic Aegean. And in the Aegean, what civilizations existed in the Bronze Age apart from the Greek Minoan and Mycenaean? Crete, the other islands of the Aegean, Ionia (Asia Minor) and mainland Greece were Greek and cradles of Greek civilization. Like the Cyclades with their admirable and superior civilization in the Bronze Age, Minoan Crete had more than palaces. Crete had houses with running drinking water and paved streets and cleanliness, excellent cultural goods that reached Western Europe in the late 19th century.^th century.

 

Palace of Knossos, 1,600 years BC. Photo: Bernard Gagnon. Wikipedia Commons

 

Fall of Minoan civilization?

According to the Ministry of Culture, Crete had extremely important Minoan cities – of Knossos and Phaistos, of Malia  Zakrou  Zominthos and Kidonias.

Photo of Crete by an American astronaut, July 22, 2011. NASA

 

Additionally, the Ministry of Culture announced and enriched Lina Mendoni's words about the Minoan Palaces of Crete with this narration:

“The Minoan Palace Centers constitute the most authentic and representative expression of the thriving Minoan society providing evidence of early urban development and revealing complex socio-political structures, functionally organized around a hierarchical administrative system. They were administrative, economic, and religious centers… [which] were designed to [serve] the diverse needs and functions of a hierarchical society. These monuments constitute a timeless reference point in the history of humanity as they provide material evidence for the development of early economic systems, such as agriculture, animal husbandry and maritime trade.”

Yes, but ancient Greece had no sacred books, religious doctrines or priesthood. Therefore, Minoan, Mycenaean and classical Greece were never a hierarchical society. Also, agriculture and animal husbandry were not primarily “economic” systems, vague words of our time. Agriculture and animal husbandry were literally a civilization because they were a synthesis of agricultural labor, self-sufficiency in food production, piety for the gods and a school of freedom and democracy. Of course, local democracy was next to kingship. We see this at the beginning of the second book of Homer’s Odyssey (2.1-84) when the young Telemachus called on the elderly leading citizens of the Parliament of Ithaca to help him free his house from the tyranny of his mother’s suitors who had occupied his father’s palace. These details of vibrant democracy in Ithaca in the early 12th century BC have escaped the rhetoric of the Ministry of Culture because the Ministry often views history through the blurred lenses of ethnonihilationism and sometimes to satisfy bureaucratic “economic” needs, as now with the construction of a new airport in Heraklion for millions more foreign visitors to Crete. The Heraklion airport is already encroaching on the sacred Minoan monument of Papoura.

 

23 teenagers and girls bring gifts to the gods. Palace of Knossos. Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete. Photo: ArchaitOptix. Wikipedia Commons

 

For example, the official summary of the Ministry of Culture, and justified hymn to the truly unsurpassed Minoan civilization of Crete, was made on July 12, 2025, the same day that Greek archaeologists, guided by the Ministry of Culture, decided to bury a Minoan treasure that the University of Athens astronomy professor, Xenophon Moussas, described as Heaven's Gate. Musa becomes a poet in the mind and summary of Heaven's Gate, which he wrote in Greek and English. Musa's description reminds me of the Antikythera Mechanism or Meteor Observatory that Greek scientists created in the 2^being century PAE in Rhodes. Certainly the ancient Gate of Heaven of Minoan Crete was an example for the development of science and technology in ancient Greece. Musas gives us the basic information about the Gate of Heaven. He sent me a paper he is doing on Papoura Hill where the Gate of Heaven is located. The information I give about this great achievement of Minoan art and culture comes from the work of Musas.

So Musas tells us that Papoura Hill is near Knossos. The Hill is “a humble peak that hides at its core one of the oldest Minoan circular structures. The monument—stepped, circular, and well-oriented—reveals that Minoan Crete did not simply build temples, but created stone time mechanisms: observatories, calendars and world shrines. Papoura is not just a building; it is Heaven's GateCombines:

• Architecture: geometrically aligned with celestial phenomena that regulate social life and mark agricultural work and holidays and of course the New Year.
• Astronomy: it functions as an astronomical center and demonstration of knowledge, while Minos receives the order from Zeus for the next eight-year cycle.
• Mysticism: unites heaven, earth and community into a single ritual body.”

 

“Circular tower and stone time mechanism of Papoura, a scaled, circular and well-oriented monument, a calendar and a place of worship.” In Kastellion, Heraklion International Airport, Crete. Photo Ministry of Culture.

 

 

Musa continues:

"THE Papoura circular tower it is not just a monument: it is cultural observatory, astronomical Gate, worship workshop of Memory and HeavenIts protection and promotion will…:

• enhance the perception of Crete as the cradle of astronomical thought·
• highlight the continuation of Greek culture in universal time;
• create sustainable development paths for local communities.

Papoura should not be buried under a radar; it should be shine as a beacon of memory, science and spirit.”

Minoan ritual ceremony from small frescoes and paintings probably from the palace of Knossos, 1,600 years BC. The English made a representation of the Minoan frescoes exhibited in the British Museum. Photo: ArchaitOprix, Wikipedia Commons

 

 

I agree with Musa. Modern Greece and primarily its scientists and scholars must love and protect their ancient heritage as soon as possible, otherwise foreigners will continue to steal and plunder Greek treasures and monuments. And besides, disinterest in Greek culture becomes ethnonihilation, which becomes betrayal and leads to enslavement and extinction.

Moussas knows what he is talking about and he says it with patriotic responsibility and the virtue of science. He is an astronomer who has greatly assisted the international study of the Antikythera Mechanism. His work inspired me and I wrote my book about this enormous and great feat of Greek astronomical science and technology, the astronomical Antikythera Mechanism / Meteorological Observatory: The Antikythera Mechanism: The Story Behind the Genius of the Greek Computer and its Demise (Universal Publishers, 2021).

Today's scientists in Greece often face a state machine that is ethno-zero. University of the Aegean professor Ioannis Lyrintzis, for example, reported to us information[1] by his colleague, Marios Dionellis, about the Minoan treasure of Papoura Hill: “At dawn [on July 10, 2025],” according to Dionellis, “the civilization of Crete was ‘stolen’. Not by persecuted immigrants. By educated professors and archaeologists. By the Ministry of Culture itself and the Central Archaeological Council. With just one negative vote, scientists (most of them archaeologists) voted in favor of the destruction of one of the most important Minoan finds in Crete, the building located on Papoura Hill, for the sake of the airport in Kastelli. They voted to place two giant radars to the right and left of the monument at a distance of 20 meters, with heavy excavations throughout the hill, where archaeological research has not yet been completed.”

 

The next day, July 11, 2025, Lyrintzis added that:

“Every other “imperative” project (of military or political importance) is carried out at a distance and with respect for cultural heritage. Everything can be done with non-superficial study. Much can be done as long as there is will, science, prudence and patience.”

On July 11, 2025, Stavros Papamarinopoulos, a professor at the University of Patras, wrote a letter expressing his concerns about the valuable Minoan treasure of Papoura Hill. He said, among other things:

“Without consistent and in-depth archaeometric research, it is not possible to do anything that will lead to the destruction of the unique monument. Professor of Astronomy at the University of Athens Xenophon Moussas can himself tell you the magnitude and complexity of the subject of the find there… It is beyond the knowledge… of those who consent to the destruction of the unique astrogeodetic prehistoric monument in the Eastern Mediterranean. Besides, opposed to the destruction are 144 personalities who co-signed their opposition to the impending destruction. With them are three scientific societies such as the Association of Archaeologists, the Hellenic Archaeometric Society and the EMAEM (SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT GREEK MYTHOLOGY).

"THAT'S the opposition... it's [from] hundreds of scientists of DIFFERENT specialties."

 

Epilogue

The warnings of Moussa, Dionellis, Lyrintzis and Papamarinopoulos about the “fall” of Minoan Crete by corrupt bureaucrat archaeologists and the Ministry of “Culture” of Greece express the corruption in the country, now in 2025. The corruption reflects foreign influence and almost occupation, mainly by NATO, the European Union, lenders and Turkey. Ethno-nihilationism is the enemy of Hellenism. It explains this strange situation where Greeks hate themselves and the Greek civilization that gave light to humanity and especially to Europe. It embraces foreign ideology, especially from America, for Greece and makes it the policy of the Greek government. Ethnonihilationism connects the fear and often the hatred of Greece's enemies (Germany and Turkey) with the Nightmare motive of the ruling class in Greece.

The Gate of Heaven on the Minoan Hill of Papoura in Crete is not only a stone time mechanism but one of many examples of ancient Greek civilization that enlightened the Greeks for centuries. It would be sacrilege and the greatest national and international crime to destroy it for any reason.

Evangelos Vallianatos, Ph.D., studied zoology, ancient and medieval Greek history at the University of Illinois, and the history of modern Greece at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate in history. He did postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard University. He worked on Capitol Hill and the US Environmental Protection Agency, was a professor at various universities, and is the author of hundreds of articles and 9 books, including the book on Freedom: Freedom: Clear Thinking and Inspiration from 5,000 Years of Greek History (Universal Publishers, 2025).

 

[1] The information I cite from various professors was published by the International Hellenic Association (International Hellenic Association, IXA).