Crete island is the fifth larger island of the Mediterranean. Its narrow and lengthened form separates the Aegean sea from the Libyan sea. It is mainly mountainous with plains on a ridiculous 1% of the territory. Its higher top culminates with 2456m. The coasts are very cut out but very different between the north and the south of the island. The first being populated more with slopes towards the sea softer. In the south, the coasts are stiffer, the climate much drier, they always were populated. Many islands are at short distance of the two coasts.
The first Mediterranean civilization goes up at the age of bronze and developed in Crete, it is the Minoan civilization, term derived from Minos, whose the palate of Knossos reached us. It is here that mythology locates the labyrinth where the King Minos locked up the Minotaur there, creature semi-man semi-bull given birth from the wife of Poseidon having succumbed to the charms of a Bull. Theseus and Ariadne succeeded in killing the Minotaur and arising from the labyrinth.
The advantageous geographical position of the island supported a flourishing maritime empire which Aegean Sea controlled a sales network which joined Egypt, Syria, the areas of the north of the Black Sea and the Occident.
Civilization of Crete had a named wedge-shaped writing "linear A", which, contrary to "linear B" Mycenaean, was not deciphered yet; towards 1450 front-JC, the civilization of Crete declined and entered the sphere of Mycenaean influence.
Interactive map of Crete
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