Whether we will some day know who Minos really was, who were the people depicted on boats off the island of Santorini and what they did, who these much-adorned women were, we cannot be sure. We only know that the island of Minos will continue to be the priviledged place of Zeus resting with Europa.
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Silentiarius
I wonder about your sources for this post, because mine seem to disagree a little. There are periods of the Minoan civilization and it is known that from some time and after (at least at the time of the destruction of the palace in 1400) the palace was controled by Greeks and there was an influence from the Mycenean to the Minoan civilization (not only the opposite) as is proved by the emphasis on arms at burials, the adoption of the Mycenean style of graves and the ceramics – influences that came from the Greek mainland (Bury-Meiggs, History of Ancient Greece, v. 1). But the most impressive evidence came with writing. Michel Ventris proved that Linear-B writing is a pre-homeric form of Greek.
Sylvain
It all depends indeed on the period one speaks about, though even this needs not be an exclusive boundary. In the period before the destruction of the Cretan Palaces around 1500-1400 is one that sees strong Minoan influence in the Aegean–although we don’t know for certain about the nature of this influence; was it political and military, economic, and/or cultural? There appears to have been Minoan ‘colonies’, at the very least zone of influence, in the southern Peloponnese. A more general aspect of influence comes from art, especially the fresco painting, directly inherited by the Mycenaeans from the Minoans, and which underwent little change over the centuries. We may almost speak of the reverse situation after the Mycenaeans invaded the island (Warrior Graves, etc.). This did not mean that all Minoan influence ceased. A fascinating example of this would perhaps be in mythology. Cretan mythology preserves the remembrance of a tomb for a god, presumably Zeus– a very un-Greek concept. Given the situation of the world in the II millenium B.C., such two-way cultural exchanges are not surprising at all, and may have had lasting results. Two worthy references would include Lord W. Taylour, The Mycenaeans, and J. Lesley Fitton, Minoans.
It is indeed impressive that an archaic form of Greek was written with a non-alphabetical script, which we can read, well before Homer. This stretches Greek history in a direct continuous line over almost 3400 years…