An international group of geneticists has discovered from comparing D.N.A. that a section of Crete’s Neolithic population (i.e. pre-Bronze Age) reached Crete from Anatolia – modern day Turkey. Professor Triantafyllidis states that their analysis indicated that the arrival of these new peoples coincided with a social and cultural upsurge that led to the birth of the Minoan civilisation around 7000 B.C. Quite separately, a group of prestigious international researchers had found that Neolithic man had settled in Southern Crete at least 100,000 years ago. They had made sustained voyages to this island over hundreds of years, and this gives credence to the idea that ancient man had been navigating by the starts for thousands of years before we had thought it possible.
Further reading:
The Lost Empire of Atlantis – Gavin Menzies
Triantafyllidis – DNA sheds light on Minoans: http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/002772.html
On Crete, new evidence of very ancient mariners: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16archeo.html?_r=0
Bryce, Trevor. The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Clark, Peter. Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009.
Collins, Paul. From Egypt to Babylon: The International Age 1550–500 B.C. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Manning, Sturt W. A Test of Time: The Volcano of Thera and the Chronology and History of the Aegean and East Mediterranean in the Mid-Second Millennium BC. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1999.
Macqueen, J. G. The Hittites. London: Thomas & Hudson, 1986
