In the Cretan towns without military fortifications, the “unprotected” villas on the edge of the sea, and the lack of any sign that the various city-states within the island fought one another or embarked on aggressive wars (in sharp contrast to the walled cities and chronic warfare that were elsewhere already the norm), we find this firm confirmation from our past that our hopes for peaceful human coexistence are not, as we are so often told, “utopian dreams.” And in the mythical images of Crete—the Goddess as Mother of the universe, and humans, animals, plants, water, and sky as her
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