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Ida, and it is also connected with the infant Zeus, who was supposedly brought there and suckled by the nymph Amalthea who took the form of a goat. The Minoan worshipers who climbed up to this cave left offerings behind to win divine favor, for bronze weapons were found embedded in the stalactites of the cave, and other votives were discovered in a pool which is at the lowest point of the cave. A roughly-built altar, set against the cave wall, was found in the upper part of the cave, and it was within a sacred precinct which is marked off by a barrier. His father, the Titan Cronus, learned from an oracle that his son would overthrow the rule of the Titans, and so he swallowed the infants which his wife, Rhea, bore, until at last she managed to give birth to Zeus deep in the cave of Dicte.

One, in the mountains south of Malia, was-according to one tradition-the cave of Dicte where Zeus was born. Two other cave sanctuaries on Crete were important enough to survive as cult sites long after the Minoan civilization came to an end. Eileithyia is a goddess known in the classical period, when she is closely associated with the Olympian goddess Artemis, and the fact that her cult persisted here is a remarkable example of continuity. The earliest dedications that the pilgrims left behind were idols with large hips and plump buttocks, handmade pottery, and stone or bone tools. On the hill above Amnisos on the north coast of Crete is a cave sacred to Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, which received worshippers as early as the New Stone Age, and continued in use until the Roman period. There is another clue to contemporary religious belief: sacred caves which were places of worship. Paved dancing floors laid out next to the tombs indicate that these were places where the community gathered for religious rites dancing in burial grounds renewed the will to live, and affirmed family solidarity in the face of death. How they were roofed is uncertain for none have been found intact, but it is clear that they were burial places for entire clans over several generations.

monumental tombs appear, first in the fertile Mesarà plain in the southern part of central Crete where five of them have been found, circular in shape with entrances facing east. The immigrants were not numerous and quickly intermarried with the native Cretans. probably introduced by immigrants from Asia Minor, where tin was mined. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, appears in Crete about 2700 B.C.E.

The Prepalatial Period on CreteĬrete follows a different pattern, even though there was interaction with the Cyclades islands. She is probably a deity, very likely a goddess whose concern was pregnancy and childbirth. The most common subject is a nude woman with her arms folded over her stomach. One favorite subject was a harpist sitting on a chair and playing his instrument, perhaps for the dead in the afterlife. The white island marble provided the raw material for a distinctive Cycladic sculpture that was geometric with flat planes, almost two-dimensional. Islanders in the Cyclades were forging daggers and spear-heads of copper by 2750 B.C.E. But it is further south, on Crete and on the Cyclades, the archipelago in the Aegean Sea grouped around the island of Delos, that one can find the first signs of civilization-a society complete with political structure, distinctive art forms, and religious rites. The earliest Greek agriculturists are found in the north at Nea Nikomedeia, north-west of Thessaloniki, there was a settlement of farmers as early as 6500 B.C.E. The Religion of Minoan Crete During the Bronze Age Early Evidence