The Bed Quotes

“The Minoans were influential enough that Minoan-style frescoes have been found in Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant. So either Minoan artists traveled to other regions to ply their trade, or else foreign artists came to Crete to study the Minoan art style. Or possibly both. The people of Crete also began what appears to be Europe’s earliest murex dye trade, centuries before the purple dye became famous as a Phoenician product.”
― Laura Perry, Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives

“According to Robert Graves, Cronos was the grain-god of a barley cult in which human sacrifice was the rule; this was a fairly common practice in many cultures at the time. Often in ancient societies, priestesses and priests enacted the myths of their deities in order to keep in tune with the cycles of the seasons. Many cultures, perhaps Crete among them, believed that the seasonal and agricultural cycles would not continue if the proper rituals were not enacted. Graves likened Cronos to the British god Bran, who was also a sacrificial barley-king. He also suggested that the Bran cult was imported from the Aegean, perhaps from Crete itself. It is more likely that the idea of a grain-god simply moved across Europe with the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic period.”
― Laura Perry, Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in our Modern Lives

“Though archaeologists have found traces of early hominids dating back 130,000 years in southern Crete, most scholars agree that human settlement did not occur until about 9,000 years ago, in the Late Stone Age. These early farmers and herders probably came across the Mediterranean from Asia Minor. First they settled along the eastern tip of Crete, then slowly expanded westward over the island. They built small houses of stone or wattle-and-daub, and buried their dead in caves.”
― Laura Perry, Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in our Modern Lives

“For having made such a great impression on the ancient world, Crete is remarkably small. The island itself is only 150 miles long and barely 20 miles wide, resting in the blue-green Mediterranean Sea just southeast of Greece. It is almost equally distant from Europe, Asia and Africa, an ideal position from which to wield social as well as economic influence in the ancient world. The island is dramatic to behold. The rocky beaches and lowlands turn sharply upward toward a steep and craggy central mountain range. These sacred mountains reach an incredible 8,000 feet in altitude at their height, a truly spectacular home for Crete’s goddesses and gods.”
― Laura Perry, Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in our Modern Lives