Most major Minoan palaces on Crete were destroyed around 1450 BC—roughly 150 years after the conventional c.1600 BC date for the Thera eruption. Knossos survived that wave and was rebuilt under mainland Greek/Mycenaean control, with Linear B replacing Linear A there by about 1400 BC. Mycenaean takeover did not erase Minoan culture wholesale, and the palatial system had largely ended before the Bronze Age collapse. Some scholars have suggested that Plato’s Atlantis story preserves distorted memories of Minoan Crete; that connection remains debated.
Most Minoan palaces fell around 1450 BC, roughly 150 years after Thera
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Key facts
- Most major Minoan palaces were destroyed in a wave around 1450 BC; Knossos was the main exception, and the evidence does not show every palace burned simultaneously.
- Knossos was rebuilt under mainland Greek/Mycenaean control, with Linear B replacing Linear A there by about 1400 BC.
- Mycenaeans took control of Knossos but did not simply replace Minoan society or culture wholesale. They also participated in the Trojan War rather than rivaling it.
- The palatial Minoan system had largely ended before the Late Bronze Age collapse of roughly 1200–1100 BC.
- Plato wrote the Atlantis story in the fourth century BCE, about 1,800 years after 1450 BC, not 900 years later. The proposed connection with Minoan Crete remains a debated hypothesis.
Sources
Archaeology: How a Civilization Disappeared - Time Magazinetime.com
The Minoan civilization had actually been destroyed around 1500 BC by falling ash and poisonous fumes from a volcanic eruption on the island of Thera.
The Minoan Eruption | American Scientistamericanscientist.org
One of the most violent volcanic eruptions to rock the ancient world, comparable in strength to the eruption of Krakatau between Java and Sumatra in 1883, was ...
Minoan eruption - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
It destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and the coast of Crete with subsequent ...
[PDF] A Grim End for Europe's First Civilization: The Fall of Minoan Cretedigitalcommons.unl.edu
It is evident that the Minoan civilization continued to thrive for around a century after the volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami that had ...
The Eruption of Thera | Forbes and Fifth | University of Pittsburghforbes5.pitt.edu
But by 1450 BCE, the palaces collapsed with no clear historical nor archeological explanation. Two explanations for this collapse express traditional views: 1) ...
Minoan palacesen.wikipedia.org
Around 1450 BC, a wave of violent destructions destroyed all of the palaces except for Knossos, which was itself destroyed roughly a century later. Contents.
Minoan Civilization Built Europe's First Palacehistorycollection.com
By approximately 1450 BCE, something far more decisive had occurred: nearly every Minoan palace except Knossos was destroyed. Whether the ...
Knossosancient-greece.org
Notably, in 1450 BCE the palace was damaged by the colossal volcanic ... Minoan, 1600-1450 BCE. Partridge frieze Fresco detail. Found ...
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