Minoan Civilization: Tracing the Five Steps to Civilization

This essay delves into the Minoan civilization, examining its evolution through the five critical stages of civilization development: the transition to sedentary farming, the production of surplus food, advancements in agriculture and technology, the division of labor, urbanization, and the development of a unique culture. The Minoans, based on the island of Crete from 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE, demonstrated remarkable advancements in water distribution systems for agriculture, evidenced by their aqueducts and architectural modifications. Their ability to produce surplus food is supported by the discovery of various pottery and utensils, indicating sophisticated storage capabilities. The Minoan civilization further distinguished itself through impressive architecture, including palaces in Knossos, and unique artistic expressions like bull-leaping frescoes, reflecting their religious beliefs and cultural practices. The presence of Cretan hieroglyphics and bronze sculptures underscores their advanced communication and metallurgical skills, solidifying their status as a significant ancient civilization that has greatly influenced Western cultures. Desklib offers more resources for students.

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MINOAN CIVILISATION
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Introduction:
The human race has not evolved in a day’s time and it took millions of years for man to
evolve into the present state. The evolution of the first humans to the modern man is journey of
time that moulded the cave men from being a hunter gatherer to a civilized human being of
today. The first men developed skills owing to their adaptive qualities to their surrounding and
started to settle down with the learning to produce food. The first men settled from being hunter
gatherers to cultivators starting to grow their own food. This journey of being a civilized being
will be discussed in this essay with context to the great Minoan to Civilization. All civilizations
had evolved through various stages of the process of being civilized. The paper will travel
through the farming practices of the Minoan civilization and their associated culture and rituals
that make them civilized. The following sections will go through the journey of the sedentary
farmers to the most privileged modern man.
A brief history of the Minoan Civilization
The Minoan Civilization was based on the Island of Crete located in the Mediterranean
Region from 2000BCE to 1500BCE and is believed to have flourished since the middle Bronze
Age. The Minoans were known for their exclusive expressive art and architecture and their trade
relations with other cultures. The most important contribution that the Minoan Civilization made
was to the development of the Western cultures. In fact the Western civilizations of today owe its
roots to the Minoan Civilization and the influence of the frescos, the architecture is evident in the
western cultures of today.

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Five Steps of the Minoan civilization
The five stages through which communities became civilizations, includes their evolution
through Sedentary Farmers, the Production Of Surplus Food the agriculture and technology that
guided it, the division of labour, urbanisation and the Culture that developed to transform it into
a civilization. The Minoan civilization had evolved through all the five stages and includes the
necessary elements that transformed it into one of the ancient civilizations of the world.
The sedentary farmers
The most important factor that reveals the sedentary nature of the Minoan people is their
irrigation system. The Minoans had incredible architectural modifications that indicate advanced
water distribution systems which were used to facilitate agriculture. The agricultural
modifications were done with respect to the water distributions systems (Bennet, 2016). The
various aqueducts and other archaeological evidences reveal that the Minoans were settlers with
agricultural practices in use and therefore can be attributed to sedentary farmers. Farming is one
of the primitive occupations that the early settlers performed and led to the production of food.
This technique of agriculture forced the travelling humans to settle down and paved the way for
the first civilizations. The Minoans were no different and with the modification in the water
distribution system, they established strong agricultural practices in their civilization (Shepherd,
2018).
Production of Surplus Food:
The production of the Surplus Food is the next stage in the development of any civilization
and the Minoan civilization has evidences of granaries and utensils that depict that they were
successful in producing extra food and supplies with agricultures. The discovery of Minoan Pottery
and the several utensils that have been found include a wide range of utensils. The archeological

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evidences have found small thin cups to large storage jars which depict their evidence of the surplus
production of food. The surplus production of food allowed the Minoans to concentrate on other
aspects of life thus refining their culture and architecture (Nikolaou et al., 2016).
The agriculture and the development of the techniques that have been developed include the
water distribution systems, the pottery and utensils also depict the development of the Minoans
through technical and cultural modifications. Ceramics were also found from the archeological
evidences therefore revealing the fact the Minoans knew the technology of the ceramics at a time that
is prehistoric (Bennet, 2016).
Culture and Urbanisation
The Minoan civilization had been one of the most ancient civilizations and has offered the
world with their astonishing architecture, frescos and the painting. The aqueducts have delivered the
most important attributes of an urban system that has proper drainage and adequate architectural
structures. The Minoans had palaces built for their civilization and the city of Knossos was built with
fine architectures that depict the most important attribute of urbanisation (Bennet, 2016). The
Minoans of Crete became one of the first civilizations of the European origin and has gifted them
with most of the cultural aspects that the European culture adheres to. The advanced water
management system is one of the gifts of the Minoans depicting their expertise in urban designing
and planning. Thus it reveals that they were a highly developed culture with urban practices and
situations (Beaton, 2017).
The frescos of the Minoan civilization are an unique expression of the civilization and
reveals their standard of the artistic intelligence. The bull-leaping frescoes reveal that the Minoans
had their religious belief attached to a bull and hence has found several occurrences in their
culture. In fact the Mythology of the Minotaur is believed to be originated from the Minoan

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civilization and was believed to be followed by the Minoans. The Minoan civilization had
complex settlement pattern that had heights closer to four storied buildings. The worshiping of
the Bull, the sport of Bull Leaping, and the various frescos depicting their lives tell us about the
ways these civilizations had gathered together to maintain a social community thereby giving
birth to civilizations. The Minoan culture also shows evidences of writing and Cretan
hieroglyphic. The variety and the quality of the art that was performed had a wide range and
included various styles of pottery and the various other utensils made from ceramics. Ceramics
were initially moulded with hands but the later staged ceramics were carved in potter’s wheel
revealing their expertise in the art and crafts. The Cretan hieroglyphics prove that they had
written mode of communication and administrative instructions and orders were carved out of
clay tablets. These prove that the Minoans had a steady system of administration making them a
strong and established civilization of their time. The Minoans also were great sculptures and
figurines were discovered made out of Bronze. This proves that they were familiar with
metallurgy and metal moulding. The knowledge of metallurgy depicts the advancement of the
civilization (Gross, 2017).
Conclusion:
The most important aspect that transformed men from wanderers to settlers is the
invention of agriculture and agricultural techniques. With agriculture the early men started
producing surplus food and found ways to store them in a way for future use. With the storage
of food men had more time to forms of activities and devote to other forms of activities as
potteries, painting, sculpting and architecture. With growth of the town with more population,
food and accommodation, the concept of power came into being. The greatest civilizations had
contributed greatly to the civilizations of the modern world by contributing their art forms,

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technologies and cultures which were modified with time to the present day. The Minoan
civilizations have been one of the ancient cultures that contributed to the cultures of the western
world of today. The Minoans were preceded by the Mycenaean Civilizations but the traditions
and cultures were followed by the Mycenaean Civilizations and their art form had influences
from the Minoan civilizations. The growth of any civilization is dependent upon the various
phases of development that transforms a community of people into a civilization thereby making
them the earliest of modern men.

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References:
Gross, M. (2017). Roots of Mediterranean civilisations.
Beaton, R. (2017). Minoans and the postmodern critique of national history: two novels by Rhea
Galanaki. Cretomania: Modern Desires for the Minoan Past, 173.
Nikolaou, T. G., Christodoulakos, I., Piperidis, P. G., & Angelakis, A. N. (2016, September).
Evolution of Cretan, Greece Aqueducts. In Proceedings of the 4th IWA International
Symposium on Water and Wastewater Technologies in Ancient Civilizations, Coimbra,
Portugal (pp. 17-19).
Shephard, R. J. (2018). Evolution of the Sedentary Lifestyle in Classical Culture. In A History of
Health & Fitness: Implications for Policy Today (pp. 41-58). Springer, Cham.
Fagan, B., & Durrani, N. (2016). World prehistory: A brief introduction. Routledge.
Glassman, R. M. (2017). Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations. In The Origins of Democracy in
Tribes, City-States and Nation-States (pp. 745-758). Springer, Cham.
Bennet, J. (2016). Minoan civilization. The Encyclopedia of Empire, 1-6.
Schoep, I. (2018). Building the Labyrinth: Arthur Evans and the Construction of Minoan
Civilization. American Journal of Archaeology, 122(1), 5-32.

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