Olive branch solves a Bronze Age mystery Discovery rewrites history of ancient Mediterranean civilizations

Science View of Santorini, Greece, from Fira. The Akrotiri peninsula (top left) was an area of major Bronze Age settlement that was destroyed but preserved by a massive volcanic eruption, which has now been dated to the 17th century B.C., a century earlier than previously thought.

WASHINGTON - Compared to the well-studied world of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the civilizations that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean just before Homer's time are still cloaked in mystery.

Even the basic chronology of the region during this time has been heatedly debated. Now, a resolution has finally emerged -- initiated, quite literally, by an olive branch.

Scientists have discovered the remains of a single olive tree, buried alive during a massive volcanic eruption during the Late Bronze Age. A study that dates this tree, plus another study that dates a series of objects from before, during and after the eruption, now offer a new timeline for one of the earliest chapters of European civilization.

The new results suggest that the sophisticated and powerful Minoan civilization (featured in the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur) and several other pre-Homeric civilizations arose about a century earlier and lasted for longer than previously thought.

The new timeframe also downplays Egypt's role in the region, suggesting that the cultures of the Levant, the stretch of land that includes Syria, Israel and Palestine, may have been a more important outside influence.

The pair of studies appears in the 28 April issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

During the Late Bronze Age, large building complexes appeared on Crete and later on mainland Greece as part of the Minoan "New Palace" civilization. At its high point, this civilization seems to have been the dominant cultural and economic force across the region, as the result of trade rather than military strength.

Sturt Manning This collapsed main staircase is one of the remains uncovered at Akrotiri, once a major prehistoric settlement on Santorini.

On Santorini, a major prehistoric settlement called Akrotiri was buried by the Minoan eruption, preserving what's often called "the Pompeii of the Aegean." Archeologists have uncovered three- and four-story houses and many other finds there, including an extraordinary collection of wall paintings that offer a glimpse into Minoan life. Women apparently played important civic and religious roles, including joining men in the sport of "bull-leaping," which seems to have been religiously significant and as dangerous as the name implies.

The people of the Shaft Grave culture on mainland Greece, meanwhile, are known for burying their rulers with an eye-catching array of weapons, tools, pottery and other gold-rich ornaments. One grave contained a face mask that was originally identified as that of Agamemnon, the legendary king of Mycenae who led the Greeks against Troy in the Iliad.

The new findings suggest that it belonged to an earlier chief or king instead.

Also around the same time, major new coastal political systems were growing on Cyprus, fuelled by the island's important copper industry that supplied the metal-hungry civilizations in the east Mediterranean.

Rethinking the timeline
It's generally thought that these cultural developments in the eastern Mediterranean occurred during the 16th century B.C., along with the New Kingdom period in Egypt, when Egypt expanded its influence into western Asia.

The new studies suggests that these developments probably took place instead during the preceding "Second Intermediate Period," when Egyptian power was weak and a foreign Canaanite dynasty even conquered northern Egypt for a while.

According to the new chronology, the Late Bronze Age civilizations in the Aegean and on Cyprus may have developed in association with 18^th- and 17^th-century Canaanite and Levantine civilizations and their expanding maritime trade world. These cultures were very different from the Egyptians' in terms of culture, language and religion.

"If the papers published this week in Science are correct, then a critical new historical context may explain aspects of the development, languages, literature, religion and mythology of the Aegean and the later Classical worlds," said Sturt Manning of the Cornell University and the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, who is the lead author of one of the studies.

CONTINUED: The great debate

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