Traces of human activity 128 thousand years BC belonging to the Middle Paleolithic have been found on Crete when the level of the Mediterranean Sea was below the current by about 160 yards, and the inhabitants of the island had boats. There were there dwarf hippos and Sicilian dwarf elephants. About predecessors of the latter, dwarf mammoths, we already wrote earlier.

In the VI millennium BC, hunters and gatherers lived on the island. They were attributed to the Tardenoisian Mesolithic culture, which prevailed in Europe. The earliest signs of any agricultural activity on Crete date back to the V millennium BC. Domesticated donkey and rabbit as well as cultivated plants were brought mainly by the aforementioned ancestors of the modern Cretans. Chips of pottery indicate connections of the islanders with the outside world, because a mode of producing is similar to that used on the cores of the Aegean Sea and in the Middle East. The first identified by DNA inhabitants of Crete belonged to the same time were G2a3b1-P303 persons. It is known that G2a1 has an extremely low frequency in almost all populations except parts of the Caucasus Mountains: G2a3b1 is common only among Adyghes and Abkhazians of the western Caucasus whose ancestors were Hattians from Central Anatolia. The fact, that Minoans were newcomers in Crete, is evidenced by the appearance of R1b1a2 persons there at about 2700 BC, who were Europeans: natives from the north of the Apennines and/or the Pyrenees, including the south of France. Another group of Minoans, who lived on the island at the same time, were newcomers from Mesopotamia, Minor Asia and Syria: the predomination of J2 persons indicates, that their ancestors lived in the said region as well as in the Middle East, on the Arabian Peninsula, in Palestine and Greece.

A study of DNA in groups of today’s Cretan population testifies that the Turks and Cretans are closer genetically to each other than to the Greeks because of Semitic ancestors. Greeks have 44% ancestors of Semitic descent, Ashkenazi Jews – 22.8%, Bedouin Arabs – 18.7%, Turks – 13.6% and Cretans – 8.8%.[1]

On Crete the use of copper is dated back to the XVII century BC, and perhaps at this time begins production of bronze after coming of the Pelasgians and Leleges to the island: the knowledge of the metal production is attributed to the Pelasgians and the Peloponnese Peninsula is named after them because they settled earlier on the mainland of modern Greece then the ancestors of the modern Greeks. In Greek the names of both ethnic groups mean stork. It’s interesting that the word “lelek” means also stork in modern Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Turkish, Tatar, Kazakh, Hindi and in some other languages. Both these ethnic groups did not speak Greek, therefore they were considered barbarians by the Achaean Greeks who later came to their lands and began methodically to force them out. In the XIII century BC a reflection of this process was the Trojan War, where the Pelasgians were allies of the Trojans. It had a devastating impact not only on the civilization of the western coast of Anatolia: the Pelasgians’ capital Larissa was about 25 miles south of Troy, its exact location is disputed. In Russia it has long been argued that the Trojans with related Dardanians as well as their Pelasgian, Enetian, Etruscan and Thracian allies belonged to the Proto-Slavs: concerning the Thracians, this is proven genetically.

After the Trojan War, its participant Odysseus sailed home. Essentially the war had not been an incredible long siege of Troy, but a 10-year robbery of the Achaeans in Minor Asia, which ended with the defeat of the Achaean coalition (we previously have wrote about it). In 1985 the outstanding British explorer Tim Severin sailed along the Odysseus’ route, as the explorer imagined it, making a stop on the southern coast of Crete. It had been the place where Odysseus and his companions allegedly had met with the Cyclops. In the opinion of Tim Severin, the following observations confirmed, that he was on the right track. First, wild goats called the kri-kri, mentioned by Homer, are still living on Crete. Secondly, in the local folklore an important place is occupied by stories of human-eating beasts allegedly still living on the island, and a careless traveler risks becoming their victim spending a night in a roadside house of an unfamiliar hamlet.

Tim Severin was shown Cretan caves, and one was suitable for the legendary giant: between Sougia and Koustogerako a former partisan Kostas Paterakis and his brothers had hid weapons from the German invaders and their allies in a karst cavity known as the Cyclops cave. In this cave shepherds had gathered even up to a thousand sheep. A similarity of the cave with the one described by Homer struck the explorer: “A huge rock fragment almost covered the entrance. The vaulted ceiling high overhead was smoked after countless shepherds’ cooking fires. Fresh water dripped from the ceiling into a container hollowed out of a log, there was also a paddock laid out of coarse stones where sheep had been milked”. Now it is a tourist attraction called Polyphemus’ Cave.

The Trojan War occurred shortly before begin of the Late Bronze Age collapse, when Dorians invaded the Peloponnesus or it was a destructive internal turmoil that destroyed the Mycenaean civilization. In any case, the Dorians founded colonies on Crete, and the Pelasgians were forced into Palestine. In the Bible we meet Pelasgians already living in Palestine in the XII BC under the local name of the Philistines who created on the coast of Palestine an alliance of five cities: at the time, there were there about 20 thousand of them.

These newcomers from the islands of Aegean basin, where they were part of the warlike “Sea Peoples”, moved first to Egypt in the area of the Nile Delta, and later reached the southern border of Canaan (had already conquered the Jewish tribes there) and were joined by the other part of their countrymen directly from Crete.

The “characteristic of the Cretans” from textbooks of logic is a very famous one. It is ‘the paradox of Epimenides” who was a famous philosopher, prophet and poet from Knossos, lived in the VII-VI centuries BC and somehow wrote ‘that all the Cretans are liars.’ The details related to his statement are not preserved, but Epimenides was himself a Cretan; therefore he was himself a liar. But if he was a liar, what he said was untrue, and consequently the Cretans were veracious; but Epimenides was a Cretan, and therefore what he said was true; saying the Cretans are liars, Epimenides was himself a liar, and what he said is untrue.

An analogous utterance of the poet Callimachus has survived. In his Hymn to Zeus (the III BC) he wrote: “Cretans are ever liars. Yea, a tomb, O Lord, for thee the Cretans built; but thou didst not die, for thou art for ever”. The Russian historian of antiquity Aleksei Losev explained in this connection that “the important geographical center associated with the cult of Zeus was Mount Yiouchtas. Callimachus tells in his Hymn to Artemis that King Minos, from whom the nymph Britomartis fled into sea, turned into the mountain of Yiouchtas”. From the west, one of its rocks really resembles a human face with a beard. “Evans said that this is the profile of Zeus”. Yiouchtas was indeed considered to be the grave of Minos. A transition from king to god is generally a constant phenomenon in mythology.

The apostle Paul, who preached about two years in Crete (before or after the year 64) and created there the first Christian community, was familiar with one of aforementioned approvals. The Gospel contains his letter addressed to Titus consecrated by him to be the first bishop of Crete, in which he instructs his disciple about the inhabitants: “One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Then the apostle continues: “This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith”…

It’s very interesting how the Blessed Jerome of Stridonium explains this text: “But as much it is meant by this, and it seems absurd; and probably no one will accept this for all Cretans, this does not apply specifically to the Jews and most of all to those who are of circumcision, but to many who are disobedient and vain, and deceivers; and above all, because they were on Crete, were considered Cretans”.

October 2017

[1] http://www.organizmica.org/archive/707/ggnc.shtml