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Posted: 15 May 2024

Taken: 15 May 2024

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THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF GREECE •
James Heneage •
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Minoan monkey tails

Minoan monkey tails
Wall fresco from Akrotirl, C 17th century BCE
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
How far afield did the Minoans trade? The picture is still changing. Frescoes found at Akrotiri depict monkeys with S-shaped tails that look very similar to the grey langurs of the Indus Valley. At the time when the Minoans were exporting luxury goods, such as the purple dye made from Murex sea snails farmed off Crete, the rich Bronze Age Harappan civilization was thriving on the banks of the Indus. It is possible that some Minoan merchants took a cargo of snails to the East, and came back with monkeys? ~ Page 8

THE SHORTEST HISTOFY OF GREECE
4 weeks ago. Edited 4 weeks ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/painted-bronze-age-monkeys-hint-interconnectedness-ancient-world-180973789

As far as archaeologists know, Asian monkeys weren’t trotting the globe during the Bronze Age. That’s why a millennia-old Greek painting of a gray langur—a primate native to the Indian subcontinent—was surprising enough to stop researchers dead in their tracks.

Archaeologists and primatologists re-analyzing wall paintings found in Akrotiri, a Minoan settlement on Thera (modern-day Santorini) buried by volcanic ash around 1600 B.C., have uncovered evidence that Bronze Age Greek artists knew of—and may have even seen—monkeys whose native habitat was thousands of miles away. Their findings, newly published in the journal Primates, hint that ancient cultures were more intertwined than previously thought. Eager to exchange ideas, artists or merchants may have journeyed far from home; eventually, the fruits of these wanderers’ travels were immortalized in paint.

Previous researchers have already noted that some of the Bronze Age artworks unearthed on the Greek islands of Crete and Thera depict monkeys of all shapes and sizes. Based on the animals’ features, as well as close trade relations between the Minoans and the Egyptians, some have been pinpointed as olive baboons, which are native to the forests and savannas of the African continent.

Other painted primates, however, were more mysterious. For instance, sprawled across one of the Akrotiri building’s walls is a fresco populated by blue, rock-climbing monkeys with buoyant, S-shaped tails. The primates remained unidentified until recently, when Marie Nicole Pareja, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recruited a group of primatologists to re-examine the painting.

“It felt really silly to examine an image of these animals as an archaeologist and art historian without asking for the input of people who look at them every day,” she tells Tom Whipple at the Times.
4 weeks ago. Edited 4 weeks ago.

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