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Chapter 3.3 Reading Quiz: Seafaring Traders
Extend Boundaries
1. Key Characteristics of the Minoans
 Island of Crete
 Seafarers
 Known for highly decorated pottery
 Athletic- bull-jumping
 Mother- Earth Goddess…depictions of female
priestesses
 Declined mysteriously…natural disaster?
Invasion?
2. Key Characteristics of the Phoenicians
 Seafarers
 Series of City-states…eventually set up colonies
every 30 miles or so along the coastline
 Famous for their purple dye and an alphabet
 Phoenician alphabet then adopted by the
Greeks...each symbol stood for a sound
3. Who was King Minos? (Time Period, Location,
Key Achievements)
 Legendary King of the Minoans in Crete
(archaeologists name the society after
him)…possibly lived around 1900BCE…story of a
Minotaur that he kept in a labyrinth and fed
children (preferably Athenian Children)

Chapter 3.3: Seafaring Traders Extend
Boundaries
 Buddhism spread to Southeast Asia and the East
Asia through missionaries, and Buddhist
traders…same process took place in
Mediterranean…traders in the region carried
many new ideas from one society to another.
I. Minoans Trade Far and Wide
 Minoans were a powerful seafaring people,
dominated trade in eastern Mediterranean
from 2000 to 1400 BCE
 Minoans lived in Crete…in the Aegean Sea
 Minoans produced fine painted pottery…traded
and exported art and culture
 Minoan culture had an enormous influence on
Greece…Crete as a “stepping stone” for cultural
exchange through the Mediterranean World
A.
Unearthing a Brilliant Civilization
 Archaeologists in the 19th century excavated
Knossos, Minoan capital city…did not have
walls/ fortifications
 Archaeologists named the civilization Minoa
after King Minos…according to legend, Minos
was a king who kept a half-human, half-bull
monster, called the Minotaur locked inside a
labyrinth
 Important sports: boxing, wrestling, bull-leaping
 Many Minoan works depict women in religious
ceremonies…did women have a higher rank in
society? Mother Earth Goddess…priestesses in
charge of some shrines
 Minoans sacrificed bulls and other animals to
their gods…also evidence of human sacrifice
B.Minoan Culture’s Mysterious End
 Minoan civilization ended about 1200BCE
 Not sure of the cause…natural disaster?
Overpopulation? Invasion?
 Series of earthquakes in the 1400’sBCE- Minoan
cities were rebuilt
 1470BCE: Earthquake, Volcanic Eruption on
Thera, tidal wave and rain of white volcanic
ash…Minoans didn’t fully recover
 Invasions after that?
II. Phoenicians Spread Trade and Civilization
 About 1100BCE- after decline of Crete, the most
powerful traders on the Mediterranean were
the Phoenicians (mainly area of modern day
Lebanon)
 Number of wealthy city-states around the
Mediterranean that sometimes competed with
each other
 Important cities in Phoenicia: Byblos, Tyre,
Sidon
 Shipbuilders and Seafarers…ventured beyond
the Straits of Gibraltar…perhaps to
Britain…maybe all the way around the
continent of Africa
 Phoenicians often sacrificed first-born children
and animals to please their cruel gods and
goddesses
A.
Commercial Outposts Around the
Mediterranean
 Phoenician’s most important city-states in
eastern Mediterranean were Sidon and
Tyre…production of purple dye…Byblos- traded
papyrus
 Phoenicians set up colonies along coast of
Africa and Sicily, Spain, Sardinia…about 30 miles
apart (distance a Phoenician ship could travel in
one day)
 Carthage= Greatest Phoenician
Colony…founded in about 725BCE in Northern
Africa
 Purple Dye was produced from a snail called a
murex…used 60,000 snails to produce one
pound of dye
B.Phoenicia’s Great Legacy: The Alphabet
 Merchants needed a way of recording
transactions clearly and quickly
 Phoenicians developed a writing system that
used symbols to represent sounds
 Phonetic system: one sign was used for one
sound…word Alphabet comes from Phoenicians
 Greeks adopted Phoenician alphabet and
changed the form of the some of the
letters…most writing on papyrus…made
learning more accessible
 Phoenician eastern cities were captured by
Assyrians in 842BCE…later under control of
Babylonians, and later of King Cyrus of Persia
III. The Long Reach of Ancient Trade
 Trading in ancient times connected the
Mediterranean Sea with other centers of world
commerce, like South and East Asia
 Land routes between India and Afghanistan
 Sea routes crossed the Arabian Sea to Persian
Gulf and the Red Sea
 Use of monsoon winds across the Arabian Sea
 Phoenician traders made crucial contributions
to world civilization…contemporaneous with
the Hebrews.