Contents
Spotlight
Inventive Crete
You may call us biased if you like (and it’s better than some of the things we have been called!) but living on Crete really is an inspiration. Every day there seems to be something new, something funny, something weird happening. Even during siesta time the creative buzz is just zinging away (could be something to do with those alternative cicadas). So when it came round to getting our acts together for this Spotlight article, our minds turned to inventions. Surely, being the island that this one is, there must be so many things that the Cretans made or thought of first….Well, yes, there are, but some of them might come as a bit of a surprise.
It is well documented that the Minoans at Knossos were responsible for inventing the first flush toilet and that they also developed an elaborate sanitation system. This information generally raises a smile among those visitors to the site who have experienced the occasional local difficulty with the plumbing here. Though it has to be said that the drains are much better now than they used to be. Let’s move on, shall we?!
Corsets
Forget Vivienne Westwood. Innovative fashion design was alive and kicking here on the island thousands of years ago. Ancient figurines (dating back to 2500BC) that have been unearthed at various archaeological sites indicate that the women of Crete worshipped a bare-breasted "Snake Goddess'. To honour the goddess women wore a garment which was sort of a bra-corset. This piece of clothing was fitted from under the breasts to the waist and was apparently designed to emphasize the breasts - somewhat like a push up bra. A very far cry from the straight laced garment of the Victorian era!
Archery and The Printing Press
According to some sources (and yes, in case you were wondering, we have been googling away like crazy for this article!) archery in its proper form was first practised here on Crete way back when. Apparently the Cretans were very good at archery and Cretan mercenary archers were in great demand. There are of course various Greek gods associated with bows and arrows. Apollo is the official god of archery, and the lovely Artemis is the goddess of wild places and hunting.
Changing the subject completely: The claim that the Cretans invented the printing press might seem like a bit of a stretch, but we’re going to run with it.
The German typesetter and linguist Herbert E. Brekle, has argued that the Phaistos Disc is an ‘early document of movable type printing, since it meets the essential criteria of typographic printing, that of type identity’ (or at least, that’s what it said in Wikipedia!). The disc, which was discovered by Luigi Pernier in 1908, has proved to be a bit of a puzzle for archaeologists (that’s putting it mildly!) and is considered to be one of the world’s greatest mysteries. The disc is made from fired clay and is covered on both sides with stamped symbols in a spiral pattern - see the picture to the right. There have been several attempts to decipher the disc, but its actual meaning and function remain disputed. It is estimated that the disc was created somewhere between 1850 and 1600 BC - though a few kill-joy scholars have said that the whole thing is an elaborate hoax. The disc is now housed in the Archaeological Museum in Heraklion.
The Colour Purple!
OK, so maybe the Cretans didn’t actually invent the colour purple (and we are not going to go down the route of discussing whether a colour exists if it isn’t defined), but they certainly managed to popularize it. For many years it thought that permanent purple dye for cloth (‘Tyrian’ or ’Imperial’ purple) was first extracted from marine snails by the Phoenicians. (for such a pretty colour the process of making the dye is pretty revolting - it involves putting a load of snails in a vat and letting them decompose). However, recent finds of a large number of Murex shells on Crete indicate that the Minoans may have been wearing purple several centuries before the Tyrians. We say hooray!
