WI: Minoan Civilization Never Dies Out

Well I'm legitimately interested in the question of the thread title being discussed. The question is a provoking one, but not something I know enough about to think about or deliberate on my own. We just need to leave the Phoenician connection out of the experiment.

The Phoenician connection, if true, adds to this question. It would essentially butterfly everything the Phoenicians helped caused after the fall of the Minoans, away.
 

I will point out the notice at the bottom of both pages: "© 2006-2012 Sanford Holst." I would kind of like to see his expertise vouched for by someone other than himself before I accept him as an expert.

Regarding the article in the second link, he starts off by discussing the arguments for and against some degree of Near Eastern influence in the development of Minoan culture. In these he seems to be following the footsteps of a number of scholars, and I have no particular qualms about accepting that elements of what we think of as classical Minoan culture may have roots in the Near East.

However, I have some problems with this statement:
The written language of the Minoans, called ‘Linear A,’ was well known to have Semitic roots among its heritage.[xlix]
So far as I know, this is not "well known"--it is still under quite a bit of debate, given that we can't read Linear A.

I am also highly dubious of his claim that:
Recent research has shown the Phoenician land and society had diverged from the Canaanite land and society by 3200 BC.[xxvi]

As far as I know, there is no evidence that the "Phoenicians" thought of themselves as anything other than Canaanite. (The footnote leads to a citation of... his own book. More on that in a minute.) This is in contrast to, for example, their Ugaritic neighbors to the north, who saw themselves as being distinct from the Canaanites, though related. In fact, the term "Phoenician" is derived from a Greek word for reddish-purple. Such as the color of murex dye. And what did Akkadian-speakers call wool of that color? Kinaḫḫu. What inscriptions we have indicate that the "Phoenicians" spoke roughly the same language and used the same script as their "Canaanite" neighbors.

He also dwells at some length on the Minoan wall frescos, claiming they show the Minoans as a peaceful society. He claims that:
The other extraordinarily peaceful society at this time belonged to the Phoenicians, who relied upon negotiation rather than fighting[liii] and, throughout their long history in Lebanon, had no army.[liv]

(Footnote liv is his book again.) This would seem to contradict certain of the Amarna letters in which the Rib-Hadda, king of Byblos (generally accepted as a Phoenician city) requests military aid from his Egyptian overlord. The city of Tyre was also besieged a number of times, notably by Alexander the Great. While the Phoenicians may have demonstrated no particular military prowess, that is not the same thing as having no army.

On a related issue regarding the frescos, there is this quote from elsewhere on phoenicians.org:
What did the Phoenicians look like? Since they preferred to keep their private affairs strictly private, the Phoenicians made almost no pictures of themselves, whether as sculpture, paintings or on their highly-prized metalwork. Therefore we primarily rely on the many people who came in contact with the Phoenicians to obtain images of them.
If the Minoans are Phoenician, and the Phoenicians made no pictures of themselves, then who are all the people in these frescos?

As for all this back-and-forth migration, it seems a simpler suggestion that the fortunes of trading cities along the Canaanite coast waxed and waned with the power of their major trading partner, Egypt. When Egypt was strong, trade in Cypriot copper and Lebanese cedar prospered under Egyptian protection. When Egypt was weak, cities would become vulnerable to outside attack, and their inhabitants would disperse among the related peoples who surrounded them. The fall of the Minoan culture around 1450-1425 BC happens to coincide with Egypt's expansion into Canaan under Thutmose III during that same century, and I would expect that the later had much more of an effect on the fortunes of the "Phoenician" cities than the former. The lack of conflict between the maritime empire of the Minoans and the maritime empire of the Phoenicians is that they simply didn't overlap that much.

Finally, getting back to Holst, it seems that all of his boldest assertions in the linked article are primarily supported by citations of his own work. This quote perhaps sums it up best:

There is more than enough information to write a complete history of the Phoenician people. Surprisingly, this complete history—from 3200 BC to 146 BC—was only told for the first time in Phoenicians: Lebanon’s Epic Heritage (2005).[xliv] In this source one sees such a wealth of classical and archaeological information that it becomes impossible to go back to the belief that the Phoenicians are a ‘mystery.’

The author of Phoenicians: Lebanon’s Epic Heritage? That would be Holst. Such a wealth of information indeed.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Tbh, we know almost nothing about the Minoans. We can't read their language, we don't know which other people they were related to, we know very little about their culture. The Minoans a very much still a mystery.
 
Ummm... Phoenician is a Canaanite dialect, for one. The Phoenician alphabet is known as Proto-Canaanite. The major Phoenician cities were exactly the same as the major Canaanite cities, such as Byblos and Tyre. They continued to call themselves Tyrians etc as they had done beforehand. In Akkadian they continued to be called kinanu, as they had been called before.


EDIT: Citations, please.

Exactly - Phoenicians were good at mixing with other Semitic people and Proto - Minoans/Pelasgians were not Semitic. Whereas they would still have influenced them, the evidence would have been clearer than architecture...

Now, Phoenicians also influenced Iberia, Northern Africa and Sicily, but there is clear evidence to support this.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Exactly - Phoenicians were good at mixing with other Semitic people and Proto - Minoans/Pelasgians were not Semitic. Whereas they would still have influenced them, the evidence would have been clearer than architecture...

Now, Phoenicians also influenced Iberia, Northern Africa and Sicily, but there is clear evidence to support this.
Pretty much, if Linear A was Semitic we wouldn't have these troubles understanding it.
 
Back to the original questions, if Minoan civilization survived what was probably a volcanic explosion, there probably would be no Greco-Roman period and everything would look different than in OTL.

Barring any volcanoes, the Minoans could become the Romans of the ATL.
 
Back to the original questions, if Minoan civilization survived what was probably a volcanic explosion, there probably would be no Greco-Roman period and everything would look different than in OTL.

Barring any volcanoes, the Minoans could become the Romans of the ATL.

Maybe they could, but will they? Rome was first and foremost a land power; as an island, Crete would be better positioned to be a sea power. It seems more likely to me that the Minoans might become the Greeks of the ATL, with cultural influence disproportionate to their size...
 
Pretty much, if Linear A was Semitic we wouldn't have these troubles understanding it.

Cyrus Gordon based his career on interpreting Minoan Linear A as being Semitic in origin (albeit with heavy non-Semitic, mainly Anatolian, influences). He had some nutty ideas to be sure, but the idea that pre-Greek Minoan was a Semitic language was carried forward by such people as Jan Best and Fred Woudhuizen. I have read a number of their monographs on the subject and find them rather convincing myself.
 
Now in this scenario, the Minoans survive the second eruption and continue on controlling the seas and trade. This would have profound effects on western civilization, as all the incredible feats the Phoenicians accomplished later, and how much they affected events in the Levant and Middle East/Egypt since they returned, would be butterflied away. That means all their colonies in the western Mediterranean (assuming they don't do something similar as the Minoans) including Carthage, would be butterflied. You can even butterfly away the Greek civilization as we know it, and with it,t he Romans. Egyptian, Hitite, and Mesopotamian history would be forever changed, as it was the Phoenicians that brought on the invasion of the Sea Peoples that caused the demise of the Hittites and the weakening of the Egyptians.
Even in OTL the Greeks and the Phoenicians, never side was able to predominate in the Mediterranean. There were both Phoenician colonies (Carthage, Gadir, etc.) and Greek colonies (Massalia, Syracuse, etc.). Given the populations of the time, I don't think it would have been that different with the Phoenicians and Minoans. I would not count out Rome either, but it would be more Minoan or probably Etruscan influenced.

I've never heard anything about the Phoenicians bringing the Sea Peoples. if anything they suffered just as much as the Egyptians and Hittites. The Sea Peoples seem to have come from Greece, Anatolia and possibly Italy
 
Even in OTL the Greeks and the Phoenicians, never side was able to predominate in the Mediterranean. There were both Phoenician colonies (Carthage, Gadir, etc.) and Greek colonies (Massalia, Syracuse, etc.). Given the populations of the time, I don't think it would have been that different with the Phoenicians and Minoans. I would not count out Rome either, but it would be more Minoan or probably Etruscan influenced.
Yet there was always conflict between Phoenicians and Greeks in the seas.


I've never heard anything about the Phoenicians bringing the Sea Peoples. if anything they suffered just as much as the Egyptians and Hittites. The Sea Peoples seem to have come from Greece, Anatolia and possibly Italy
The sea peoples left the phoenician cities alone from what I remember.
 
The sea peoples left the phoenician cities alone from what I remember.

Although I had read that the Hebrew tribe of Dan likely originated with a group of Sea Peoples called the Denyen, which might have been the Danaoi, a name for an early Mycenaean group. Certainly the most well-known member of the tribe, Samson, had many similarities with typical Greek culture heroes, and the tribe was unique among the Twelve Tribes of Israel for their seafaring skills.
 
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