During the Bronze Age, a peculiar civilization was born in Crete, which the first excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, called Minoan, after the sea king and legislator king Minos, who according to the myths of ancient Greece reigned in Knossos. The geographical position of Crete among the countries where the earliest civilizations flourished, brought it very early into contact with the world of the East, from where the Minoans drew technical and spiritual achievements of a high level and, after adapting them to their own standards, they introduced them to the rest of the Aegean.
Thus, the Minoan civilization is considered the first high civilization of the prehistoric Aegean, but also of the whole of Europe. Compared to the data of other early civilizations, the Minoan emerges an unprecedented sense of freedom and lightness that is expressed mainly in art and could be interpreted as a looseness of the administrative system. However, after a more careful study of the society, it is found that in Minoan Crete specific and rather strict social rules were in force, while almost everywhere religion dominated.
