3. From Thera to Atlantis
The Minoans eventually morphed in Greek mythology into the legend of the vanished civilization of Atlantis. They had been the Mediterranean’s greatest naval power, as well as the dominant force in the Aegean, including what became Greece and the Greek world. The Minoans were primarily commercial sea traders. They were oriented towards Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, and were strongly influenced by those civilizations. While the Minoans flourished, the Aegean world in their thrall was oriented in the same direction, and strongly influenced by the Egyptian and eastern civilizations as well. Then came the Thera Eruption, which weakened Crete and the Minoans sufficiently to create a power vacuum in the Aegean. It was filled by the Mycenaeans in mainland Greece. They went on to conquer Crete and destroy the Minoans, and became the Aegean’s dominant power.
Unlike the Minoans, the Mycenaeans’ energies were focused not on trade with Egypt and the Levant, but on the colonization of the Aegean, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, and the western Mediterranean. That change of orientation significantly reduced Egyptian and eastern influences upon the Greeks. Thus, when the Greek world flourished centuries later, long after the Mycenaeans had themselves vanished, it did so as a civilization distinct from those of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, rather than as an extension and outpost of those cultures. Since western civilization is founded upon that of the ancient Greeks, an argument could be made that today’s western civilization and its impact on the modern world would not exist but for the Thera Eruption.
