Minoans' Sophisticated Diet Included Imported Spices From Asia
By
Patricia Claus
May 25, 2022
The Throne Room at Knossos, the capital of the Minoan civilization. Credit: Rolf Dietrich Brecher/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-2.0
The Minoans were a remarkable people with a civilization far advanced for its time in many ways with artwork and palaces replete with riches beyond description; now, we know that their diet was as rich and varied as their physical culture, much of which survives to this day.
Evgenia Tsafou of the Aegean Interdisciplinary Studies Group of UC Louvain and Juan José García-Granero of Oxford and of the Human Ecology and Archaeology Research Group of Barcelona have published a paper on this fascinating subject.
Appearing in the Journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, the new study builds on previous investigations into the diet of the Minoans by analyzing grains found in vessels at two Minoan sites on Crete, Sissi, and Malia.
Detail from the Blue Monkeys fresco at Akrotiri, Santorini. Credit: Zde/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC-BY-SA 4.0
The cooking and storage pots in question were from the Minoans neopalatial, final palatial and post-palatial periods, representing the time from 1700 to 1100 BC.
More:
https://greekreporter.com/2022/05/25/minoans-imported-spices-asia/