and now we turn our way away from Egypt and Mesopotamia and turn our eyes over to where our story really starts that would be Greece now looking into the Aegean and Greece it gives me an opportunity to introduce you to the gentleman who's on your screen right now Heinrich Schliemann if you look at mr. Schliemann on Wikipedia you will find out that Schliemann is credited as the father of modern archaeology because of his excavations in uncovering the history of Greece particularly Troy now that sounds very thrilling it also gives me an opportunity to let you kind of have a window on the fact that well archaeology is not quite the same when it begins as it is today archaeology is less of a science more of a let's call it an Indiana Jones undertaking which brings me back to Heinrich Schliemann Heinrich Schliemann is a brilliant man no question about that we know that he speaks 13 languages and has a variety of different careers he comes from an educational background his father actually runs a parochial school a religious school for a number of years until of course his father's caught embezzling and gets thrown out Schliemann follows in his father's footsteps becoming a consummate con artist he uses his intelligence and those 13 languages in helping him in those endeavors until finally at the age of 46 Schliemann decides he wants to be famous he wants to leave a legacy and he looks around at his world now Schliemann is living in the late 1800s the Victorian era and Schliemann is looking for what is interesting and appealing and it turns out the big thing in the newspapers the thing that all those socially elite are interested in is archaeology particularly archaeology surrounding Greek legend and myth now in the Victorian era Greek mythology was as familiar to them as pop culture and football are to most people today therefore when people heard about a search for the city of Troy as described by Homer in the Iliad there was much excitement and much interest and Schliemann decided this this was going to be his fame and his legacy Schliemann of course decided that since he'd never been an archaeologist he didn't know anything about archaeology he needed to make some new friends he learns about other people who claim to know something about discovering the city of Troy from the Iliad and from Greek myth and legend and he fixates on a young man named Calvert in 1868 Schliemann meets Calvert and expresses his enthusiasm in fact Schliemann claims that his father had given him the Iliad and the Odyssey as a child and Schliemann claimed that he had said he would find Troy when he was only eight years old we don't know how true that claim is but that's totally what Schliemann tells his newfound friend Calvert is delighted to have such an enthusiastic supporter but he's a little hesitant wisely a little reticent to actually reveal where specifically he thinks the city of Troy is located simply because he's trying to get money together to go and unearth it as an archaeological expedition Schliemann of course says yes I I completely understand why you're hesitant I wouldn't want to tell me either you shouldn't trust anyone but you know what I believe in you so much I'm going to go raise money and Schliemann goes and raises money for the expedition he sends letters back to Calvert tells him how much he's raised and Calvert is incredibly impressed now Schliemann is being honest here he really is raising the money the question is that we do not know whether he's actually raising the money for Calvert's expedition to discover Troy or if he has other plans eventually Calvert believes Schliemann enough to actually tell him the location where he believes Troy he's truly located it's actually on the edge of Turkey in a place known as Hisarlik Schliemann is ecstatic at this information and he promptly takes the money he's raised and heads off to the location that Calvert tells him he thinks Troy is located who is that he begins digging and when Calvert shows up Schliemann tells him that he's delighted to see him and he will make him a partner in Schliemann's enterprise Calvert is to say the least not thrilled not only that since Schliemann is not an archaeologist his methods are interesting Schliemann is impatient and Calvert tells him that he's destroying a lot of the evidence he's destroying a lot of what he needs he's not doing things properly Schliemann gets frustrated and irritated he feels Calvert wants to go too slow so Schliemann decides that he needs to speed up the process obviously since the city of Troy dates all the way back all the way back to the poet Homer in ancient Greece it must be really old Schliemann decides it must be obviously the oldest construction at the site where they're digging so he just needs to get to the bottom Schliemann promptly proceeds to load the dig site with dynamite and blow his way down to the lowest level we estimate that he actually blew up nine different levels of archaeological remains of cities of Troy and modern scholars believe that he actually discovered a site that was between 300 and a thousand years too early to be the story the city described in the story that Homer wrote which means technically Schliemann the father of modern archaeology Thank You Wikipedia actually blew up the historical Troy he was looking at this however does not dissuade Schliemann he declares victory and unearths a cache of treasure which he names Priam's treasure naming it after the king of Troy from Homer's Iliad now there is no evidence whatsoever that any of this actually has to do with King Priam but Schliemann doesn't particularly care what he does care is that he has a great treasure to show off now Schliemann tells this as a good con man would as an epic story he says that he and his wife by the way we this is not his first wife this is his newest wife he and his wife were out walking around on the archaeological site and they just find this treasure trove of gold and jewelry lying on the ground and his wife gathers it up he has her put it on and he takes pictures of her as you can see on the lower left team that finds a number of burial sites including a number of spectacular gold masks unfortunately for Schliemann when his wife tries to wear that ancient jewelry home the Turkish government puts their foot down stops that and prevents Schliemann from removing any further artifacts from their country now one of the great treasures that Schliemann claims is this it is known as the mask of Agamemnon and is what we call a funeral mask essentially Schliemann excavated three different tombs and each of those three tombs was a body with its face covered by a sheet of gold pounded out thin with details inscribed in it as if the face of the Dead were recreated or sculpted into the surface of the gold this one was by far the most spectacular of the three it looks very different than the other two and Schliemann named it the mask of Agamemnon naming it after King Agamemnon the husband of Helen Helen of Troy from the story of the Trojan war now there's a lot of questions about the mask of Agamemnon simply because it is so different from the other two and because we know something else about Schliemann we know that in other archaeological expeditions Schliemann did what was called salting his digs basically that means that Schliemann would buy expensive archaeological items on the black market bring them with him to the archaeological dig and then bury them so that he could dig them up and discover them later as a rich find this mask there's a lot of questions about it because it doesn't seem to look like any other artifact at the site and my students notice something about it that I actually had not noticed if you look at the mask next to the picture of Heinrich Schliemann there actually is a similarity particularly that that lovely stache he's got going now this image implies that Schliemann might have salted this but the argument against that the other side we know that Schliemann arrived at this site about three days before he uncovered this mask so it would only have had three days to obtain something that was similar to other items at the find and bury it and number two we've actually dated the materials from which of the mask of Agamemnon is crafted and the gold itself the material is actually from the correct time period so on one hand it seems unlikely that Schliemann could have had this created in time to fake the plant at the same time it's highly suspicious because it doesn't fit with anything there either way the thing I want you to remember is that archeology in its childhood is very different than archeology today archeology today is a science that pays a great deal of attention to where objects are found takes great care to record them correctly and dates them with a great deal of accuracy and attention to detail that wasn't always the case which is why there's many questions about the earliest finds in the Aegean in Greece because in the Victorian era when archaeology was just getting its feet under it those areas were places where people knew the stories and were obsessed with finding the truth behind them now the location where a lot of this early civilization shows up is right here inside that red squiggly line on the map in front of you this area is the space between what we today would call Greece and Turkey and the area between those two is what is known as the Aegean the Aegean Sea and the small islands out in the Aegean by the way I don't know if you guys are hearing it on the recording but if there's this horrible crunching grinding noise that is my dog Ace he currently has an elk antler in his mouth and he is gnawing on it with a great deal of enthusiasm so he's making horrid noises just ignore them there's nothing wrong with your computer okay now this area in the Aegean in the ocean between Greece and Turkey actually is host to two completely separate and unique civilizations as well as a rising civilization on the actual peninsula of Greece inside that area now let me point out the three areas and then on the next slide I'll show you the names and why they're named that way all right on the map if you'll look you'll see a number of little light blue islands out in the Aegean those Islands are all Cycladic islands and the culture that survives and thrives on those islands is known as the Cycladic culture named after the islands themselves down to the south at the bottom of the map is the actual island of Crete which is that pink color the island of Crete has its own unique culture called Minoan culture which thrives and is phenomenally advanced it's very exciting from what we know about it and then the third area is actually on the peninsula of Greece it's what we call Mycenaean culture or Mycenaean culture it's the culture that's referenced in Homer's Iliad King Agamemnon is a Mycenaean king who brings his army over to the city of Troy I also want you to notice that the little bump on the peninsula of Greece where Athens is located in Thebes is known as Hellas later on you'll actually see that culture referred to as Hellenic or Helladic because of the name of that small area now those three cultures Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean are your three very early cultures in this region and all of them begin to lay the groundwork for us for the way we think and the way that we view the world now those three cultures the Cycladic cultures those are all the little islands out in the Aegean sea which excludes Crete are all called the Cyclades the culture on those islands is fascinating it is a fishing culture that has easy farming and rich soil and it is a shared culture because we know those islands traded back and forth based on the artifacts we find on them there's also Minoan a culture which is actually named after King Minos now King Minos is the king from Greek mythology if you're familiar with the story of Theseus and the Minotaur you're probably familiar with the story of King Minos King Minos was believed to rule over an island kingdoms south of Greece Crete qualifies and because of finds by a later archaeologist whom you'll meet in a minute they named the island of Crete the culture there they named it Minoan after the mythical stories of King Minos the third culture is Mycenaean it's named after the city of Mycenae which is where the King Agamemnon from The Iliad Helens husband rules the mainland is also sometimes called Helladic that's that little bump on the side of the peninsula where Athens is located now these three cultures are incredibly important and incredibly rich in art however it may seem a little odd simply because I talked about the four earliest cultures the Indus Valley culture the Yellow River culture of Mesopotamia Egypt so how did we end up going from those early cultures over to the Aegean how did we get from point A to point B well no one knows for sure but we do have several theories we actually believe that most likely the first people to end up in the Aegean were the Phoenicians now the Phoenicians were a trading people they were seafaring people they traded back and forth between Egypt and Mesopotamia in wooden sailing ships about 40 feet in length or so we've actually found a few of them sunk on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and we know that the Phoenicians were skilled sailors and traders we believe it's possible they actually ended up in the Aegean on purpose exploring but we also think it's very possible that they were simply blown off-course the Mediterranean Sea to this day is a region where there are terrible storms that simply seem to blow up out of nowhere I mean modern ships with GPS get wrecked we think the Phoenicians may have simply been blown off course and land and then the Cycladic Islands now if they get blown off course and landed in the Cyclades why didn't they just turn around and head home well there's several possible reasons one is well they didn't have GPS and therefore if they were lost with a damaged ship they might not want to just climb in a ship and hope they ended up going in the right direction number two we are well we know that if these were Phoenicians and we believe that they were because the items we found in this Cycladic islands the earliest items are quite similar to those we find in Phoenicia if these people are indeed Phoenicians they're coming from the general area of Mesopotamia which means they're used to very difficult weather rough farming conditions deserts not having much time for anything relaxing because they are constantly struggling to survive and creating and innovating in order to survive we believe they left that kind of an environment and landed elsewhere they kind of landed in paradise guys this is the Aegean Sea today these are the Cycladic islands if you can imagine someone from the desert the miserable little area of Mesopotamia landing here we don't think they wanted to go home this area is absolutely beautiful the soil is incredibly rich everything grows when it is planted it's easy to farm the waters around these islands are filled with all kinds of edible sea life crabs fish it would have been exceedingly easy for the people who landed on these islands to not only survive but to thrive why would they want to go home they just want to bring more people over and start their own society and we believe that's exactly what happened and because it was so easy because there was so much time these people create an incredible amount of artwork now that may sound silly but essentially people don't create artwork if they're worried about surviving food kind of comes before art if they have time though they create things that make their homes and their lives easier and more beautiful and that's exactly what happens on these islands we find a lot of these items that are created by the Cycladic cultures but the single most common thing we find are actually Cycladic idols again archeologists are the least creative people ever are naming things the Cycladic idols are images that show figures with arms crossed across their chest about 80% of them look like this and these are all female Cycladic idols female Cycladic idols are what we call a closed form in other words the arms are crossed across the chest the legs are side-by-side most of them have come through time fairly well simply because it's very hard to break them there is not a great deal to break on a Cycladic Idol originally Cycladic idols wood stove had the very triangular shaped head the very large nose but they actually would have had faces painted onto the front of them for example if you look at the close-up here there is actually you can see the outline of a large white eye on the face originally these would have had faces painted on them and many of them would have had hair rooted at the top of the weird triangular shaped head we don't know what these Cycladic idols are actually used for people have suggested that maybe they were goddesses some people have suggested maybe they were intended to remember dead ancestors if you notice their feet are angled they could not have stood up we don't really know one of my students a while ago tried to convince me that these were actually the world's first Barbies which is kind of an awesome idea but actually that's not likely simply because some of the Cycladic idols run up to 14 feet tall which is absolutely insane we know about 80% of these idols are female the other 20% are male and they look very very different than females males equated idols look like this they have what we call our open forms where the arms and legs stick out and a much more natural pose now there are also musicians both of the pictures on this screen are actually guys playing a harp that's a harp on his lap do not get excited he's just playing a harp all right now that you both of them you will see our on chairs they have a harp in their hands and their arms are extended as if they are playing that harp now this is actually a much more dynamic as I said open pose and these figures allow a much more relaxed realistic interpretation of the human body only about 20% of the figures we find are actually these male Cycladic idols and although we don't know why for sure we do have some theories about why the division is like 80/20 one of the theories is that this society was female dominated and there are more female Cycladic idols because they were considered more important or the goddess was perhaps one of the most important deities the other option is much less exciting and romantic but it's simpler it's simply the fact that because these male Cycladic idols are open forms or their arms and legs sticking out they were far more likely to be broken and therefore did not stand the test of time nearly as well as the female Cycladic idols did now we would know a lot more about these male and female Cycladic idols and what they meant and what's Cycladic Islands culture was like if we could read their writing unfortunately yeah no we we can't do that there are two forms of writing out in the Aegean linear a and Linear B the first form of linear writing we can read because it is what is called proto Greek in other words it's an earlier form of Greek it's kind of like if any of you're familiar with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales it's kind of like trying to read Canterbury Tales in the original it's weird it's kind of English you can figure it out but it's not easy essentially that's what linear B looks like the problem is that linear a does not seem to have any relation to Greek and we have not yet managed to decode the writing system so it leaves us confused not understanding we don't know the details of either Cycladic or Minoan culture because we cannot read that writing system Minoan culture actually is something we're desperately eager to learn more about because it is so fascinating Minoan culture is actually investigated thanks to Greek mythology again an archaeologist named Arthur Evans becomes absolutely fascinated with the idea of the civilization on Crete being the historical equivalent of the civilization that is described in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur now this story actually inspires Arthur Evans to begin digging around on the island of Crete and sure enough he finds something truly remarkable he finds a very advanced civilization on the the island of Crete and he names it the Minoan civilization after King Minos now Minoan civilization is exceedingly advanced and it's really fascinating to us but we don't know as much about it as we would like one of the really fascinating things about the Minoan civilization is that it is so advanced and yet it seems to decline and disappear rather rapidly in the grand scheme of things for a long time we didn't really have a good working theory as to why that was but recently we have created a much better idea of why it disappeared thanks to geology we know that there was an island called Thera you can see it there with a volcano called Santorini we know that that that volcano actually exploded and currently there is not much of an island left the volcanic eruption was so drastic it actually blew part of the island submerging it under the Mediterranean Sea the same time that that a violent volcanic eruption goes off is about the same time that the culture on the island of Crete begins to decline now interestingly enough it seems that there's a lot of communication back and forth with the Mycenaean and Helladic civilizations while Crete is thriving so we believe that since there were already strong parallels and communication between those two regions when the volcanic eruption goes off the people from Minoan cultures simply move on to the mainland of Greece strengthening their existing connections and encouraging or influencing the culture in Greece now we actually discovered the evidence of this remarkable culture on Crete thanks to the excavations of another Victorian archeologist named Arthur Evans now Arthur Evans is highly inspired by the story of Theseus and the Minotaur so before we actually talk about the Palace of Knossos we're gonna stop here and I'm gonna make sure that you actually know the story of Theseus in the Minotaur and then we'll talk about Arthur Evans and what he actually discovered on the island of Crete