With every past civilization, after all is dug up and examined, it is the art that remains to impress us. "The extraordinary murals show us...imposing matrons with bare breasts and thick voluptuous lips, birds--pheasant and partridge--blue monkeys, princes with peacock feathers in their hair, fierce holy bulls, tender-aged priestesses with sacred snakes wrapped around their arms... boys in flowering gardens." At Knossos "Man and bull played together. The bullfighter grasped the bull by the horns, the beast became angry and tossed his head high in the air, which enabled the bullfighter to gain momentum and jump with a nimble somersault onto the bull's back. Then he made a second somersault and landed on his feet behind the bull's tail, where a young girl was waiting to clasp him in her arms." In an Egyptian tomb a procession of Minoans bring gifts--the art and artifact of their culture to the Pharoah. The most beautifully restored frescoes come from the most recent excavation on the island of Thera. The subject shows the same love of nature and the Great Goddess. Minoan art changed the overwhelming and powerful view of mankind to a small, graceful humanity "with bodies that moved, mouths that smiled: the features and stature of God took on the features and stature of"ordinary human beings.

Minoan ceramic cups and bowls were as thin as an egg shell, delicately decorated. Their jewelry was equally skillful. Vases carved out of solid rock were a major export item. The rhyton was a ritual vessel used to pour libations into the earth and came in many elaborate forms like the Bull's head. There was also a flourishing textile industry in Crete, however nothing remains to show us except the clothing shown in the art. There were 100,000 sheep mentioned on clay tablets found at Knossos. The Minoans had a written language, we just don't know what is says; thus writing was introduced to the Greek civilization from the Minoans. The two languages used many of the same signs but only the Greek Linear B has been deciphered. J. Chadwick, who deciphered Linear B with M.Ventris, commenting on the fact that "Every Linear B tablet thus far uncovered...is a piece of the bureaucratic machinery", the Palace at Knossos may have been burned to the ground by a population "weary of filling out endless reports for the benefit of the central administration." Perhaps the Minoan language was more literary but don't bet on it.