Neolithic period in Crete

Origin of settlement of Crete in neolithic is still unsure but new discoveries   ( read more here)tend to prove that it was e-far earlier than scientists believed a decace ago. In 2002, the paleontologist Gerard Gierlinski discovered fossil footprints left by ancient human relatives 5,600,000 years ago. Excavations in South Crete in 2008–2009 revealed stone tools at least 130,000 years old. This was a sensational discovery, as the previously accepted earliest sea crossing in the Mediterranean was thought to occur around 12,000 BC. The stone tools found in the Plakias region of Crete include hand axes of the Acheulean type made of quartz. It is believed that pre-Homo sapiens hominids from Africa crossed to Crete on rafts.

In Neolithic age, it seems that the colonization of Crete was made since the Anatolia and Asia Minor, even the Peloponnese. A theory which leans on the sea level at that ice age period.

(inferior of hundred meters at its current level and thus easily accessible). This primitive civilization was nevertheless at the stage of the culture of lands and in the breeding of animals there. Housing environments were still often rudimentary, often caves, even if the stone constructions were not unknown to them. Studies on the fauna showed the presence at the time of dwarf horses, dwarf elephants, dwarf deers, of rodents and insectivores but not big carnivores. Dwarf hippopotamuses also existed, as give evidence of it rests found on the plateau.

This civilization did not know metals yet. Weapons and tools were from stones, of whom the obsidian. In diverse places where found the small primitive statues representing a woman, which would tend to establish a worship to a goddess of the fertility. At the beginning of the Neolithic, Crete colonizes with a higher rhythm, than somewhere else at sea an Aegean Sea. An advance from two to four millenniums on the other islands which is going to sit the golden age of the minoan civilization. According to tracks found by the archaeologists, it would seem that the colonization of the island is made by the East (Anatolia, Cilicie and maybe Palestine) and touched first of all is from the island.
We found tracks of activities on the islands of Mochlos and Psira and the first ports would have been implanted

The archeological site of Roussolakkos: we found the tracks of a city there dating 3000 B.-C. Ther was found a room of a hymn to diktean Zeus (Zeus according to the legend would have been born in a cave in the mount dikti). This room is exposed to the archaeological museum of Heraklion. This fragment allows to learn more about the religion of the inhabitants of the island at that time, who made numerous offerings for the nature. On the site, we also found a golden and ivory statue of the Palekastro Kouros (exposed to the archaeological museum of Sitia) . That is or the starting point of the colonization of the island, we find on the site of Knossos, in the center of the island, tracks of less developed human presence, which would go back to 6500 av J-C. These first inhabitants bring with them their knowledge of sheep and goats farming, as well as the culture of cereal. At the beginning of the néolithic, houses are in the form of hut with wooden picket with ground in hard-packed surface. In the late Neolithic, stony walls appear and houses arrange several adjacent rooms. The techniques of construction evolve and appear cobs, bricks, walking of entrance … The late Neolithic sees an important increase of the population (multiplication of sites and development of the most important of them : Knossos). It is also at that time that appears the pottery on the island, as given by the evidence of the discoveries in the caves of Gerani and Lera.