As always, a huge thanks to everyone who supports our efforts, even as we make our own historical mistakes: www.patreon.com/rareearth ko-fi.com/rareearth
This SHOW runs on yours & Kat's Awesome EPICNESS & LOVE💞 THANK YOU for being HUMANE Beings making the World a better place for us all 💯 Sending Great Gratitude & Appreciation, Big Blessings & Love, Many Mercies & Joy, All the Compassion & Luck🍀🙏✌🏽✊🏽❤🇨🇦 May All be free from Suffering
Did that for 15 years, because I just wanted to create cool things. Then I found out managers who don't do anything get double the salary and regard me as a mediocre employee who doesn't deserve a promotion.
I understand what you guys are saying. And to be clear, the context is more along the lines of not letting your pride or ego get in the way of accomplishing a 'greater good.'
I'm sorry you're going through that Evan. I just went through the same thing with my sweet boy. We only had 10 days from diagnosis until he was gone. Please treasure every remaining moment you have with him. As for the house... I'm glad you are ok. 💕
You should tackle the mythologization of Zheng He's voyages next. Commonly depicted as a pioneer, when in truth he was sailing a very active ancient maritime trade route that has existed for thousands of years before him. Then fictionalized in a novel written 200 years after his death, where the gigantic sizes of his ships are now accepted as truth, even when physically impossible.
While the gigantic ships are not fit for sea, they could arguably travel down a wide calm river. I love the theory that the treasure ships were built to join the rest of the fleet parading down the Yangtze, giving the impression that they went along on the entire journey. However, the more likely explanation is a discrepancy in unit conversion, or the numbers used to describe the ship were symbolic and not descriptive, the same way the number 7, 13, or 666 is used symbolically in the west.
@@TeamKatastrophe Or it could just be the embellishment of fiction, the simplest explanation that makes sense. The measurements were given long after Zheng He passed, by a novelist. It's like if Gulliver's Travels or Sinbad's tales from 1001 Arabian Nights were regarded as historical records.
What he pioneered is the massive fleet. It was the state attempt to control all oversea trade. It failed but you can't deny the wonder of the scale of engineering and logistics to make and utilize those ships. The navigation and exploration, was as you said, it was already exist and is massively overblown.
@@Account.for.Comment Did you miss the part where there are no actual records of the real number or dimensions of the ships he used? The claim of a "massive" fleet and "enormous" ships are from a romanticized novel by Luo Maodeng written in 1597. There are no clear contemporary illustrations or actual figures. Just brief imperial records that ships were built and expeditions were launched.
You take as long as you need for your life, Evan. You are well worth the wait. Sorry to hear of your furry fam member passing. I know from experience how much that hurts.
From the day I saw how fragmentary the pieces that the famous frescoes were “reconstructed” from were in a book as a kid, I have been bewildered how we can tell much at all about what they are portraying. Thank you for explaining. The endless comparisons to Victorian fashion and architecture become a lot more understandable too when you hear about Crete being pushed as a proto-Britain.
Hey Evan, I’m crying and I’m not exactly sure why. It was a captivating story, beautifully written, so representative of the history and archaeology of the period, and then… It became something else. A love letter to storytellers and truth seekers and freedom fighters. Still crying. What the heck. Anyway, I’m so terribly sorry to hear about your dog and house. Wishing you well.
Congratulations on ONE MILLION SUBS. I remember when this channel was tiny, and I've been a proud supporter as much as I possibly could. Every penny was worth it.
Wow! Evan Hadfield finally made a video about himself! But joking aside, despite there being a lot of parallels between both Evan and Evans, you Evan don't destroy or overwrite the stories you share with us. At least to my knowledge you don't. As for your dog and house, that really sucks! We recently had to put down the best dog I ever knew and it just really sucked. He was just such an awesome dog in so many unique ways and we all still miss him despite still having a couple other younger dogs around to make his passing less lonely. Definitely wishing you the best and I'm sure you'll make your dog's final moments as wonderful as you can.
I wrote an entire essay on Evans' rediscovery of Knossos in detail, and took such pride in my results and final grade... I didn't know any of this... I feel so duped and dumb for reinforcing Evans' lies and taking them at face value. I still have a lot to learn as a studying anthropologist/archaeologist.
I'm so sorry to hear about your dog and house, my cats just died in a house fire it is not a fun combo to lose your pets and the place you live all at once
@@dfwai7589 Tried threads? It's still carefully curated to reduce civil unrest, but things are so much more pleasant. Less curated than X, to be clear.
Firstly, my condolences on the loss of your beloved family member. I found your video very thought provoking. "When I was but thirteen or so I went into a golden land, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, took me by the hand." In my case it was Theseus and Alcibiades, Crete and Athens and the whole glorious golden land. I wanted to be an archaeologist, studied Greek at University, although I did not end up as I had hoped, I did eventually visit the sites. I was a volunteer on a dig in England and learned that most digs are prosaic and often boring often resulting in a few shards of pottery. I didn't make it but I still love the romance of "discovering" how our ancestors lived, not just the kings and nobles but the hoi polloi as well. Now I use my skills as a genealogist and historian to research the lives of those in local cemeteries and take tours describing their life experiences as far as I can discover it. Telling the story of the part that they played in the world of their time. I am a storyteller for them, trying to excite people to understand what we owe them. I watched (a still watch) Time Team and years later wonder at the influence that programme has had on a whole generation of armchair archaeologists. They too were story tellers, with Tony Robinson as the mediating idiot asking the questions on behalf of the audience, to be answered by the field experts. Why? For me, it is the threat that councils and Governments pose to these evidences of our past and the hope that by exciting the general public about the lives of these people I will prevent "tidying" of these cemeteries. A practice where memorials are uprooted and stacked neatly around the edge of the enclosure leaving a nice easily mowed grass plot, but destroying the relationships between the graves of family and friends. So yes, what Evans did was bad archaeology but I would argue that had he not bought the land perhaps all of the finds would have been lost or sold off as curiosities. His storytelling about the Minoans excited public support for this and other sites just as Time Team and its many "digs" in people's backyards with their story of "3 days to Find" excited so many of the British public to the extent that there is huge public support for requiring rescue digs ahead of large building projects. When excavations for the footings of an office block in London uncovered remains of the Globe, I was one of the many thousands of Londoners who turned out in shifts of growing numbers, to link arms and protect the site, and alongside famous actors, demand that the building be redesigned to protect and display the remains. That this happened and that the developer was forced by public pressure to accede is I believe due in part to Time Team's storytelling effect on a generation. Perhaps the "romance" and "story telling" are necessary and Evans rescued more than he destroyed.
Have to be careful with that. At least one archeologist was accused of faking evidence, hounded out of profession and maligned for decades for uncovering pre-Clovis artifacts during a time when “Clovis first” was the reigning dogma. We now know, without a shadow of a doubt (thanks to White Sands) that Clovis was not first ….
In the end Arthur Evans was laid low by false information. In July 1941 he was 90 but still in good health when he met a member of the British Intelligence Corps who informed him that the Germans had destroyed the Knossos site during their invasion of Crete that May. Believing his life's work had been ruined, Evans died three days later but in reality Knossos had not been affected at all by the fighting.
I love your videos about crete, as i was there a couple times, they bring back good memories! This story implies that the whole minoan civilization is obscured or tainted by evans vision. This is certainly true to some parts, but there are a lot of artefacts (unchanged/unreconstructed) with which we can trace deveolpment of the minoan civilization. I understand this video is about the history and the people who discoverd the minoan civilization but I think you could have emphasized a bit more, that it is neither fully a phantasy to legitimize the greek/creete people nor the phantasy of a british archeologist who wanted to this to be the find that puts him in the history books.
It's a miracle that Greece is alive again after it was destroyed by the Ottomans, Genoese, Venetians etc. Congratulations in successfully fighting for your freedom despite thousands of soldiers and civilians being massacred. Your existence is a welcome addition to the modern world. I love your history and mythology.
Ottomans were greeks and slavs as well not all were turks It was an empire It was better to be under ottomans than lets say... austria Yet all vassal countries still exist today You cant really delete cultures as you wish
Ok but why are you talking about Greeks on a video about Minoans? The Minoans completely vanished. They were even less greek than the gauls were french.
Geez. The Minoans were a genuine complex ancient civilization with plenty of real artifacts to find and mysteries to solve. There was no need to make stuff up. Sure - The truth is always messier than a good story and takes a lot more effort to uncover but come on. The people of Crete are entitled to their real legacy.
Bit of a clickbaity title, but a pretty good film, if a little unfair on Evans. Speculative reconstructions have always been a thing in archaeology, literally for as long as it's existed- Italian renaissance princes used to pay artists to restore broken Roman statues they'd had dug up by sculpting new heads and limbs for them. Speculative reconstructions are still pretty common today, although modern museums archaeologists usually try to be more transparent about what they've done and why. Likewise, local people cashing in on interest in archaeological discoveries by creating fake artefacts was common all over the place back then, and still happens today. Evans didn't set out to deliberately defraud or mislead anybody. He just tried to present his discoveries in as exciting a way as possible, sometimes getting carried away as a result. He was certainly a lot better than many of his peers, and the Minoan civilisation itself certainly wasn't fake.
I don't think it's unfair at all. Yes speculative reconstructions are a thing - but they're supposed to be based on reality, the best guess at what it would have been like in the past based on all the current evidence. That is NOT what Evans did. Not even close. At best you could say what he did was more like an imaginative reconstruction - he imagined what he thought this ancient culture would be like, and then reconstructed things in a way that fit his imagination. At worst he merely came up with a story he felt would be appealing to the masses and set out to 'reconstruct' things in a way to support that appealing story. I tend to lean towards the latter explanation, seeing as he essentially tried to make them look very similar to the British empire when British people were the primary audience for his story.
@StreakyBaconMan It is unfair because he did comissioned all those counterfeits. The restaurators did those on their own accords. I am not talking about very speculative reconstructions but of real counterfeits which where sold as originals.
@@barbarossarotbart I'm sorry I don't understand what point you're trying to make. What I was saying is not unfair is the portrayal of Evans in this video - at least in my opinion it is not unfair. I don't see how your comment relates to that.
@@StreakyBaconMan his portrayal is unfair because in the eyes of his contemporaries he did nothing wrong. His reconstructions are highly speculative and are based on his personal belives and not on his findings but that's a sort of mistake which is still made today. His associates, the Gilliérons are the problematic ones. They were responsible for his restaurations and reconstructions, they also produced legitimate replicas but a lot of forgeries. We do not know how many of the artifacts found in Knossos by Evans are forgeries made by the Gilliérons without Evans knowledge. And this fact is completely ignored in the video.
@@barbarossarotbart By that logic it's unfair to portray slave owners in a negative light because their contemporaries never saw anything wrong with it. Just because it was acceptable to his peers at the time doesn't mean it's not wrong. He constructed a fantasy, and sold it to the masses as the true history of these people for his own personal gain. I don't think it's unfair to portray him that way. The forgeries are an entirely separate issue.
I have never heard of Minos, always knew that a British guy 'discovered' the so called Minoans. I've visited Knossos Palace in Crete before, even then it was undergoing renovation. Loved the art and bright colours.
Just popping in to tell the youtube algorithm that I actually liked the previous video title more, but was busy and couldn't watch it until now! Please mark me down for the other one mr youtube, thank you very much!
wow, there was a lot i wasn't aware of :o also, I really appreciate the poetic writing, even though it sort of complicates things. but it's inspiring. :)
Just came from Crete a week ago….great people,great food, will come back definetly…but we also decided to skip Knossos because i read about this freestyle reconstrucion method and that ruins in Chania was enough for us 😊 Crete is a special place, especially the south ❤
A little thing about Linear A. It's not as if the script itself is undicifered, it's very similar to Linear B after all, but that the language it's written in will never be understood. Linear B was used to write an ancient greek dialect, Linear A's language has no living or known ancient relatives. It will remain unknowable because the language itself is lost.
That's exactly why we can't confirm that it's decyphered though. We can infer that surely similar symbols would produce similar sounds, but we have no way to confirm it because we can't understand it. "never be understood" is inaccurate actually. The main issue currently is the very small size of the corpus. We have like 8000 "signs" total - liner B required 30 000 signs and it's a language we were already slightly familiar with. We don't have strong hypothesis about the nature of the language written in linear A, except that it's not greek. But it could belong to a known family. Elamite and sumerian are also linguistic isolates and we were eventually able to decypher inscriptions made in these languages. There's zero reason why it would remain unknowable. We "just" need more texts written in it.
Btw, the cyprio-minoan syllabary is in the same place. The corpus is even smaller. We know it's more recent than Linear B. We only have about 2500 "signs", that's simply not enough to identify the language. We were able to read Elamite after new tablets were found in 2018. Same thing can happen for linear A and cypro-minoan.
Do I recognize that tune for your outro? It sounds very much like a Latin American Spanish tune I've heard recently. So you're a suspected Israeli spy! Can't wait for that story.
In the end Arthur Evans was laid low by false information. In July 1941 he was 90 but still in good health when he met a member of the British Intelligence Corps who informed him that the Germans had destroyed the Knossos site during their invasion of Crete that May. Believing his life's work had been ruined, Evans died three days later but in reality Knossos had not been affected at all by the fighting.
Nepotism is a game of craps. You could get a perfectly competent and capable guy who just happens to have been born rich, no fault of his own. OR -- you end up with a narcissistic sociopath. There's no guarantee you go either way and no way to be fair either. But good news is -- that's unfair and absurd if you're born poor, too.
With Nepotism you tend to get two kinds of people, those who feel like they need to prove themselves worthy of the reputation of their parent and work very hard to live up to it, and those who feel like their parent makes them untouchable and they can coast through life living off the legacy they created.
@@Croz89 there's also those with chronic anxiety that kinda shut down and have no idea what to do with their life. There's all types. Like I said, you roll the dice in every life. No guarantees. Just love your kids and hope for the best.
Wow, you've got a million subs now! Despite this, the all-powerful algorithm has decided I do not want to see your videos anymore. The algorithm is wrong, so I have to look them up myself every now and then. Congrats on the growth of the channel!
@CynBH 4 weeks ago I'm sorry you're going through that Evan. I just went through the same thing with my sweet boy. We only had 10 days from diagnosis until he was gone. Please treasure every remaining moment you have with him. As for the house... I'm glad you are ok. 238 Reply
@@cassieoz1702 As a Greek_? δεν γουσταρω να ακουω τετοιες μπουρδες ,περι FAKED ΙΣΤΟΡΙΕΣ μονο για ελληνικα ιστορικα δεδομενα απο τουρκοπληρωμενα αγγλοσπορα ζωα, που ποτε δεν μιλανε για αλλους αρχαιους λαους π.χ. αιγυπτιους? το χειροτερο που βλεπω συνεχεια , ειναι οτι αγγλοφωνοι σαν κι εσενα να συμφωνουν με ιστορικες αηδιες , μονο κι μονο απο ανοητη αμαθεια! μαθε κι καταλαβε την ελλην. ιστορια μας που φτανη 25.000 χρονια πισω κι μετα ξανασχολιασε , ΠΟΙΗΣΗ! τα σεβη μου
I find it so funny the you seem to be following our family. We were missionaries in Micronesia living on Pohnpei and we are just moving to Cyprus. Maybe we will run into one another one day. Love the videos.
Evan, you can't go and tell people archaeologists "faked" a civilization, the Minoan civilization existed, its not because Schliemann's apprentice and Evans faked some stuff that it stops being true. I know that you don't say that in the video, but you *HEAVILY* imply it on the title and only once even acknowledges that the minoan culture actually existed, this means this video is clickbait at best, misinformation at worst, and wrong either way.
I don't say that the civilization was fake I say they faked the civilization which is entirely true. A great many of the conclusions they came to were based off nothing more than their imagination. Conclusions that have stuck right up until today. Are you worried people will watch this video and walk away thinking the Minoan civilization didn't exist? I simply don't understand how that would be possible.
I am so sorry. I just had to give my last kitty back to God and it hurts! The rest is stuff and can be fixed or replaced. I had to move a year ago and had to give up 3/4 of my stuff. One survives. This WA a fascinating story, one I'd never heard before. I had no idea that Arthur Evans was an idiot intent creating on his fantasy rather than finding truth. The story behind the story is usually an interesting one containing more actors and a greater reality. Love the last paragraph. I'm thinking you guys must be a lot of fun to hang out with.
Thank you for all the information provided on this. I agree almost 100% except Evans wasnt a Hero and Lied alot(as stated) . I learned this information from a guide on the side of King Minos Palace. I was born on this Island Kriti only 150KM west from Knossos. Every Place the British Went they stole so many relics just to prove superiority and Financial Gain. All these Historical Artifacts cared for by the community for Themselves to appreciate and keep nice. Its quite shameful. Especially to do it right after the war finishes when the Island is Recovering. Why would you remove these pieces and put them in another country where they weren't made. Not only were they removed but they were placed in a museum that has nothing to do with this historical period or place. The same Thing Happened in Kasta in North Greece. They tried to Take The Lion of Amphipolis. You Can Look It up Right Now. The Aristocrats Just didnt care
I'm so sorry to hear about your "good boy". It's always hard when that time comes. It's good that the two of you were there for him. As for the tree, you didn't accidentally wish on a monkey's paw yourself, did you? There are two quotes from Sir Terry Pratchett that seem to apply here: “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Globe “It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”--Terry Pratchett, Good Omens It's amazing what kind of harm can be done by people just wanting a good story. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, it was the story of world domination. In the case of Minos, it was the story of the importance of Crete to human civilization. In the case of Evans, it was the story of how clever he was as an anthropologist. In every case, the story was more important than the reality. Such is life.
Proposal on how to deal with the archaiological site: Call it Knossoi and take out the concrete new parts and put them in a replica of the current site as it is now. Then given the restored original site, make another replica nearby that is more faithful to our current understanding of their civilisation.
The trouble is archeology is always destruction, there is not going to be much of the original site left. Abetted of course by plopping a concrete building on the site. Given the archeological practices of two centuries ago there is not going to be much in the way of detailed dig records either.
This video is special indeed. The eloquent narration told me about a dramatic compelling time when 2 harshly beaten souls brought back to history the remains of a dormant civilization, forgotten for longer than 3000 years. Lots of food for thought to find here.
As always, a huge thanks to everyone who supports our efforts, even as we make our own historical mistakes:
www.patreon.com/rareearth
ko-fi.com/rareearth
This SHOW runs on yours & Kat's Awesome EPICNESS & LOVE💞
THANK YOU for being HUMANE Beings making the World a better place for us all 💯
Sending Great Gratitude & Appreciation, Big Blessings & Love, Many Mercies & Joy, All the Compassion & Luck🍀🙏✌🏽✊🏽❤🇨🇦
May All be free from Suffering
use machine learning on the minoan script. this is one thing it may be very good at.
use machine learning on minoan script. it will translate. give it all the random context you can. that's one thing it's good at.
Minos' story reminds me of a saying where I work:
"You'll be shocked at what you can accomplish when you stop worrying about who gets the credit."
Did that for 15 years, because I just wanted to create cool things. Then I found out managers who don't do anything get double the salary and regard me as a mediocre employee who doesn't deserve a promotion.
@@navwood And what's potentially worse: as soon as anything goes wrong, they're eager and willing to blame you.
That said, OP is not wrong.
I understand what you guys are saying.
And to be clear, the context is more along the lines of not letting your pride or ego get in the way of accomplishing a 'greater good.'
Yea you'll be shocked that you never get a promotion
Oh I got screwed by that saying.
I'm sorry you're going through that Evan. I just went through the same thing with my sweet boy. We only had 10 days from diagnosis until he was gone. Please treasure every remaining moment you have with him. As for the house... I'm glad you are ok. 💕
My dog's recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She's slowing down quick. It hurts a lot. I'm sorry for your loss.
@@paulb8030 Thank you. I'm so sorry you're going through the same thing. 💔
You should tackle the mythologization of Zheng He's voyages next. Commonly depicted as a pioneer, when in truth he was sailing a very active ancient maritime trade route that has existed for thousands of years before him. Then fictionalized in a novel written 200 years after his death, where the gigantic sizes of his ships are now accepted as truth, even when physically impossible.
While the gigantic ships are not fit for sea, they could arguably travel down a wide calm river. I love the theory that the treasure ships were built to join the rest of the fleet parading down the Yangtze, giving the impression that they went along on the entire journey. However, the more likely explanation is a discrepancy in unit conversion, or the numbers used to describe the ship were symbolic and not descriptive, the same way the number 7, 13, or 666 is used symbolically in the west.
@@TeamKatastrophe Or it could just be the embellishment of fiction, the simplest explanation that makes sense. The measurements were given long after Zheng He passed, by a novelist. It's like if Gulliver's Travels or Sinbad's tales from 1001 Arabian Nights were regarded as historical records.
Sounds most interesting
What he pioneered is the massive fleet. It was the state attempt to control all oversea trade. It failed but you can't deny the wonder of the scale of engineering and logistics to make and utilize those ships. The navigation and exploration, was as you said, it was already exist and is massively overblown.
@@Account.for.Comment Did you miss the part where there are no actual records of the real number or dimensions of the ships he used? The claim of a "massive" fleet and "enormous" ships are from a romanticized novel by Luo Maodeng written in 1597. There are no clear contemporary illustrations or actual figures. Just brief imperial records that ships were built and expeditions were launched.
You take as long as you need for your life, Evan. You are well worth the wait. Sorry to hear of your furry fam member passing. I know from experience how much that hurts.
Evan, thank you for doing Rare Earth videos. I am grateful.
From the day I saw how fragmentary the pieces that the famous frescoes were “reconstructed” from were in a book as a kid, I have been bewildered how we can tell much at all about what they are portraying. Thank you for explaining. The endless comparisons to Victorian fashion and architecture become a lot more understandable too when you hear about Crete being pushed as a proto-Britain.
Hey Evan, I’m crying and I’m not exactly sure why. It was a captivating story, beautifully written, so representative of the history and archaeology of the period, and then… It became something else. A love letter to storytellers and truth seekers and freedom fighters. Still crying. What the heck. Anyway, I’m so terribly sorry to hear about your dog and house. Wishing you well.
Hello, Evan. As a Minoan Archaeology, I can only say: Thank you. Really, thank you for such excellent content.
Congratulations on ONE MILLION SUBS.
I remember when this channel was tiny, and I've been a proud supporter as much as I possibly could. Every penny was worth it.
Appreciate you dude
Wow! Evan Hadfield finally made a video about himself!
But joking aside, despite there being a lot of parallels between both Evan and Evans, you Evan don't destroy or overwrite the stories you share with us. At least to my knowledge you don't.
As for your dog and house, that really sucks! We recently had to put down the best dog I ever knew and it just really sucked. He was just such an awesome dog in so many unique ways and we all still miss him despite still having a couple other younger dogs around to make his passing less lonely. Definitely wishing you the best and I'm sure you'll make your dog's final moments as wonderful as you can.
I wrote an entire essay on Evans' rediscovery of Knossos in detail, and took such pride in my results and final grade...
I didn't know any of this...
I feel so duped and dumb for reinforcing Evans' lies and taking them at face value.
I still have a lot to learn as a studying anthropologist/archaeologist.
do u know about the marbles
what is that about
@@feelinghealingfrequences7179 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles
I'm so sorry to hear about your dog and house, my cats just died in a house fire it is not a fun combo to lose your pets and the place you live all at once
Hey Evan, I've seen some of your tweets. Keep hanging in there, we care for ya.
I refuse to touch Twitter with a 20 footpole, what's going on?
@@dfwai7589 the description talks about it
@@dfwai7589 Tried threads? It's still carefully curated to reduce civil unrest, but things are so much more pleasant. Less curated than X, to be clear.
@@dfwai7589your lose
@@n1k0n_ No they chose wisely.
Firstly, my condolences on the loss of your beloved family member.
I found your video very thought provoking. "When I was but thirteen or so I went into a golden land, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, took me by the hand." In my case it was Theseus and Alcibiades, Crete and Athens and the whole glorious golden land. I wanted to be an archaeologist, studied Greek at University, although I did not end up as I had hoped, I did eventually visit the sites. I was a volunteer on a dig in England and learned that most digs are prosaic and often boring often resulting in a few shards of pottery. I didn't make it but I still love the romance of "discovering" how our ancestors lived, not just the kings and nobles but the hoi polloi as well.
Now I use my skills as a genealogist and historian to research the lives of those in local cemeteries and take tours describing their life experiences as far as I can discover it. Telling the story of the part that they played in the world of their time. I am a storyteller for them, trying to excite people to understand what we owe them. I watched (a still watch) Time Team and years later wonder at the influence that programme has had on a whole generation of armchair archaeologists. They too were story tellers, with Tony Robinson as the mediating idiot asking the questions on behalf of the audience, to be answered by the field experts.
Why? For me, it is the threat that councils and Governments pose to these evidences of our past and the hope that by exciting the general public about the lives of these people I will prevent "tidying" of these cemeteries. A practice where memorials are uprooted and stacked neatly around the edge of the enclosure leaving a nice easily mowed grass plot, but destroying the relationships between the graves of family and friends.
So yes, what Evans did was bad archaeology but I would argue that had he not bought the land perhaps all of the finds would have been lost or sold off as curiosities. His storytelling about the Minoans excited public support for this and other sites just as Time Team and its many "digs" in people's backyards with their story of "3 days to Find" excited so many of the British public to the extent that there is huge public support for requiring rescue digs ahead of large building projects. When excavations for the footings of an office block in London uncovered remains of the Globe, I was one of the many thousands of Londoners who turned out in shifts of growing numbers, to link arms and protect the site, and alongside famous actors, demand that the building be redesigned to protect and display the remains. That this happened and that the developer was forced by public pressure to accede is I believe due in part to Time Team's storytelling effect on a generation.
Perhaps the "romance" and "story telling" are necessary and Evans rescued more than he destroyed.
We have Thomas Lockley making stuff up and trying to pass it off as history in Japan.
Faking evidence for a historical dig should land someone in prison.
Have to be careful with that. At least one archeologist was accused of faking evidence, hounded out of profession and maligned for decades for uncovering pre-Clovis artifacts during a time when “Clovis first” was the reigning dogma. We now know, without a shadow of a doubt (thanks to White Sands) that Clovis was not first ….
In the end Arthur Evans was laid low by false information. In July 1941 he was 90 but still in good health when he met a member of the British Intelligence Corps who informed him that the Germans had destroyed the Knossos site during their invasion of Crete that May. Believing his life's work had been ruined, Evans died three days later but in reality Knossos had not been affected at all by the fighting.
Do any of Minos' original notes of his excavations still exist (if he took any)? Would it be possible to do a more accurate reconstruction from them?
He didn't excavate nearly enough, nor record it well enough, and on top of that he was just an amateur himself.
I love your videos about crete, as i was there a couple times, they bring back good memories! This story implies that the whole minoan civilization is obscured or tainted by evans vision. This is certainly true to some parts, but there are a lot of artefacts (unchanged/unreconstructed) with which we can trace deveolpment of the minoan civilization. I understand this video is about the history and the people who discoverd the minoan civilization but I think you could have emphasized a bit more, that it is neither fully a phantasy to legitimize the greek/creete people nor the phantasy of a british archeologist who wanted to this to be the find that puts him in the history books.
It's a miracle that Greece is alive again after it was destroyed by the Ottomans, Genoese, Venetians etc.
Congratulations in successfully fighting for your freedom despite thousands of soldiers and civilians being massacred. Your existence is a welcome addition to the modern world. I love your history and mythology.
They barely are
Ottomans were greeks and slavs as well not all were turks
It was an empire
It was better to be under ottomans than lets say... austria
Yet all vassal countries still exist today
You cant really delete cultures as you wish
Ok but why are you talking about Greeks on a video about Minoans? The Minoans completely vanished. They were even less greek than the gauls were french.
Another wonderfully enlightening docustory. Thank you, Evan, you are having an impressive impact on the world.
Unusual commentary style, but effective. Subscribed
The last credits are hilarious, great job but love the end comments. Had a great laugh.
00:07 "I can see my house from here" Can't make out which one it is, but still...
I really needed this today , thank u
Geez. The Minoans were a genuine complex ancient civilization with plenty of real artifacts to find and mysteries to solve. There was no need to make stuff up.
Sure - The truth is always messier than a good story and takes a lot more effort to uncover but come on. The people of Crete are entitled to their real legacy.
8:43 I remember that painting from a National Geographic cover. I don't know how to feel now that I know it's mostly fake.
Thanks for showing the wonderful Minoan culture and Greece's hard won victory for independence. Sorry about your 4 legs ❤
as always, love the political lens you bring to historical stories. hope everything is well. thanks
Bit of a clickbaity title, but a pretty good film, if a little unfair on Evans. Speculative reconstructions have always been a thing in archaeology, literally for as long as it's existed- Italian renaissance princes used to pay artists to restore broken Roman statues they'd had dug up by sculpting new heads and limbs for them. Speculative reconstructions are still pretty common today, although modern museums archaeologists usually try to be more transparent about what they've done and why. Likewise, local people cashing in on interest in archaeological discoveries by creating fake artefacts was common all over the place back then, and still happens today.
Evans didn't set out to deliberately defraud or mislead anybody. He just tried to present his discoveries in as exciting a way as possible, sometimes getting carried away as a result. He was certainly a lot better than many of his peers, and the Minoan civilisation itself certainly wasn't fake.
I don't think it's unfair at all. Yes speculative reconstructions are a thing - but they're supposed to be based on reality, the best guess at what it would have been like in the past based on all the current evidence. That is NOT what Evans did. Not even close. At best you could say what he did was more like an imaginative reconstruction - he imagined what he thought this ancient culture would be like, and then reconstructed things in a way that fit his imagination. At worst he merely came up with a story he felt would be appealing to the masses and set out to 'reconstruct' things in a way to support that appealing story. I tend to lean towards the latter explanation, seeing as he essentially tried to make them look very similar to the British empire when British people were the primary audience for his story.
@StreakyBaconMan It is unfair because he did comissioned all those counterfeits. The restaurators did those on their own accords. I am not talking about very speculative reconstructions but of real counterfeits which where sold as originals.
@@barbarossarotbart I'm sorry I don't understand what point you're trying to make. What I was saying is not unfair is the portrayal of Evans in this video - at least in my opinion it is not unfair. I don't see how your comment relates to that.
@@StreakyBaconMan his portrayal is unfair because in the eyes of his contemporaries he did nothing wrong. His reconstructions are highly speculative and are based on his personal belives and not on his findings but that's a sort of mistake which is still made today. His associates, the Gilliérons are the problematic ones. They were responsible for his restaurations and reconstructions, they also produced legitimate replicas but a lot of forgeries. We do not know how many of the artifacts found in Knossos by Evans are forgeries made by the Gilliérons without Evans knowledge. And this fact is completely ignored in the video.
@@barbarossarotbart By that logic it's unfair to portray slave owners in a negative light because their contemporaries never saw anything wrong with it. Just because it was acceptable to his peers at the time doesn't mean it's not wrong. He constructed a fantasy, and sold it to the masses as the true history of these people for his own personal gain. I don't think it's unfair to portray him that way. The forgeries are an entirely separate issue.
Beat wishes about your current situation. Can't wait for the spy story.
I have never heard of Minos, always knew that a British guy 'discovered' the so called Minoans. I've visited Knossos Palace in Crete before, even then it was undergoing renovation. Loved the art and bright colours.
Just popping in to tell the youtube algorithm that I actually liked the previous video title more, but was busy and couldn't watch it until now! Please mark me down for the other one mr youtube, thank you very much!
.....not to mention toplessness and jumping over bulls....which is/are great.
Thank you for your great show
You make great videos man, really makes me want to travel. Thank you.
I really appreciate the stories you tell, Evan. I hope you and Kata are doing alright ❤
Another amazing video. Thank you for making these
wow, there was a lot i wasn't aware of :o
also, I really appreciate the poetic writing, even though it sort of complicates things. but it's inspiring. :)
Good luck with everything brother, take it easy
Just came from Crete a week ago….great people,great food, will come back definetly…but we also decided to skip Knossos because i read about this freestyle reconstrucion method and that ruins in Chania was enough for us 😊 Crete is a special place, especially the south ❤
Archaeology is about Truth and Accuracy... or should be. So, thank you for making this video!
Great story! thanks for the perspective 👍. History gotta luv it !
A little thing about Linear A. It's not as if the script itself is undicifered, it's very similar to Linear B after all, but that the language it's written in will never be understood. Linear B was used to write an ancient greek dialect, Linear A's language has no living or known ancient relatives. It will remain unknowable because the language itself is lost.
That's exactly why we can't confirm that it's decyphered though. We can infer that surely similar symbols would produce similar sounds, but we have no way to confirm it because we can't understand it.
"never be understood" is inaccurate actually. The main issue currently is the very small size of the corpus. We have like 8000 "signs" total - liner B required 30 000 signs and it's a language we were already slightly familiar with. We don't have strong hypothesis about the nature of the language written in linear A, except that it's not greek. But it could belong to a known family. Elamite and sumerian are also linguistic isolates and we were eventually able to decypher inscriptions made in these languages.
There's zero reason why it would remain unknowable. We "just" need more texts written in it.
Btw, the cyprio-minoan syllabary is in the same place. The corpus is even smaller. We know it's more recent than Linear B. We only have about 2500 "signs", that's simply not enough to identify the language.
We were able to read Elamite after new tablets were found in 2018. Same thing can happen for linear A and cypro-minoan.
Do I recognize that tune for your outro? It sounds very much like a Latin American Spanish tune I've heard recently.
So you're a suspected Israeli spy! Can't wait for that story.
Some would say this is just the tip of a very large iceberg…
I'm sorry a 🌳tree fell on your house😬
Hope you're Boy is doing better ❤sending all the Healing Blessings and Love❣
Kata is a AWESOME Nurse!
🙏💞🍀
In the end Arthur Evans was laid low by false information. In July 1941 he was 90 but still in good health when he met a member of the British Intelligence Corps who informed him that the Germans had destroyed the Knossos site during their invasion of Crete that May. Believing his life's work had been ruined, Evans died three days later but in reality Knossos had not been affected at all by the fighting.
Great episode 👍🏼 Honestly
Nepotism is a game of craps. You could get a perfectly competent and capable guy who just happens to have been born rich, no fault of his own. OR -- you end up with a narcissistic sociopath. There's no guarantee you go either way and no way to be fair either. But good news is -- that's unfair and absurd if you're born poor, too.
With Nepotism you tend to get two kinds of people, those who feel like they need to prove themselves worthy of the reputation of their parent and work very hard to live up to it, and those who feel like their parent makes them untouchable and they can coast through life living off the legacy they created.
@@Croz89 there's also those with chronic anxiety that kinda shut down and have no idea what to do with their life. There's all types. Like I said, you roll the dice in every life. No guarantees. Just love your kids and hope for the best.
Most nepo babies are incompetent and lazy
Even bigger group are narcissist and less than 1% of them are competent as you said
Being born rich makes you content with the status quo.
They are also not going to understand the issues faced by 'regular people'
Babe wake up, new Rare Earth vid just dropped !!
I so wish we knew more about the minoan civilisation.
Libertiesare taken when "piecing together" ancient finds. Minoens are real
Can you use past tense when describing past events?
Please learn what a framing device is.
@@PlatinumAltariaDoes that make it a good communication device?
wow
@@benqurayza7872 It's been good enough for like a thousand years, so yeah.
I'm never this early for Rare Earth
Wow, you've got a million subs now! Despite this, the all-powerful algorithm has decided I do not want to see your videos anymore. The algorithm is wrong, so I have to look them up myself every now and then. Congrats on the growth of the channel!
A comment to please the Great Algo, and also to thank you for your work. I am always thrilled to see a new episode!
This is so sad. And a worthy warning.
@CynBH
4 weeks ago
I'm sorry you're going through that Evan. I just went through the same thing with my sweet boy. We only had 10 days from diagnosis until he was gone. Please treasure every remaining moment you have with him. As for the house... I'm glad you are ok.
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I really liked the storytelling. As a Greek I was triggered by the title, but the quality of the content made me listen. Thank you.
you are not a greek, if you think that
@@cassieoz1702 As a Greek_? δεν γουσταρω να ακουω τετοιες μπουρδες ,περι FAKED ΙΣΤΟΡΙΕΣ μονο για ελληνικα ιστορικα δεδομενα απο τουρκοπληρωμενα αγγλοσπορα ζωα, που ποτε δεν μιλανε για αλλους αρχαιους λαους π.χ. αιγυπτιους? το χειροτερο που βλεπω συνεχεια , ειναι οτι αγγλοφωνοι σαν κι εσενα να συμφωνουν με ιστορικες αηδιες , μονο κι μονο απο ανοητη αμαθεια! μαθε κι καταλαβε την ελλην. ιστορια μας που φτανη 25.000 χρονια πισω κι μετα ξανασχολιασε , ΠΟΙΗΣΗ! τα σεβη μου
@@jerkerMAN-nf3nsthe Minoans are fake 😂
I’m sorry but WHO WRITES THESE VIDEOS? The script goes so hard and the writing is concise yet beautiful.
@@afflict9341 that's super nice of you to say, thank you
1:48 this map is wild 😂
That is Rare Earth on every level😊
I've heard similar stories about Persepolis
anyone know what the deal is with the marbles
a healthy baby boy, what an intertext! 😍
This script in this video is next-level, even for you. Wow.
Always excellent
"You're making things up again Arthur" - Book of Minos
bring on deciphering Linear A!
Very well presented.
I find it so funny the you seem to be following our family. We were missionaries in Micronesia living on Pohnpei and we are just moving to Cyprus. Maybe we will run into one another one day. Love the videos.
Evan, you can't go and tell people archaeologists "faked" a civilization, the Minoan civilization existed, its not because Schliemann's apprentice and Evans faked some stuff that it stops being true.
I know that you don't say that in the video, but you *HEAVILY* imply it on the title and only once even acknowledges that the minoan culture actually existed, this means this video is clickbait at best, misinformation at worst, and wrong either way.
I don't say that the civilization was fake I say they faked the civilization which is entirely true. A great many of the conclusions they came to were based off nothing more than their imagination. Conclusions that have stuck right up until today.
Are you worried people will watch this video and walk away thinking the Minoan civilization didn't exist? I simply don't understand how that would be possible.
Saying someone faked the moon landing doesn't mean you think the MOON is fake.
This left me wanting to know so many more details.
Does that make this one of your worst tellings... or one of your best? 😉
There is Great story to tell in Cyprus. Last divided capital in Europe.
think about how much of history we know is actually this way
Cool story bro.
I am so sorry. I just had to give my last kitty back to God and it hurts! The rest is stuff and can be fixed or replaced. I had to move a year ago and had to give up 3/4 of my stuff. One survives.
This WA a fascinating story, one I'd never heard before. I had no idea that Arthur Evans was an idiot intent creating on his fantasy rather than finding truth. The story behind the story is usually an interesting one containing more actors and a greater reality. Love the last paragraph. I'm thinking you guys must be a lot of fun to hang out with.
Evans je bio Ustasha .
Thank you for all the information provided on this. I agree almost 100% except Evans wasnt a Hero and Lied alot(as stated) . I learned this information from a guide on the side of King Minos Palace. I was born on this Island Kriti only 150KM west from Knossos.
Every Place the British Went they stole so many relics just to prove superiority and Financial Gain. All these Historical Artifacts cared for by the community for Themselves to appreciate and keep nice. Its quite shameful. Especially to do it right after the war finishes when the Island is Recovering.
Why would you remove these pieces and put them in another country where they weren't made.
Not only were they removed but they were placed in a museum that has nothing to do with this historical period or place.
The same Thing Happened in Kasta in North Greece. They tried to Take The Lion of Amphipolis. You Can Look It up Right Now.
The Aristocrats Just didnt care
so this is the House On The Rock of the Mediterranean.
good video
I'm so sorry to hear about your "good boy". It's always hard when that time comes. It's good that the two of you were there for him.
As for the tree, you didn't accidentally wish on a monkey's paw yourself, did you?
There are two quotes from Sir Terry Pratchett that seem to apply here:
“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Globe
“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”--Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
It's amazing what kind of harm can be done by people just wanting a good story.
In the case of the Ottoman Empire, it was the story of world domination.
In the case of Minos, it was the story of the importance of Crete to human civilization.
In the case of Evans, it was the story of how clever he was as an anthropologist.
In every case, the story was more important than the reality. Such is life.
Damn
I'm greek and I was just in Herkalion and I never new this
fake it until you make it
You should do a video on dinosaurs lol
As long as you have the undying urge to tell a cool story,
we will keep listening.
Keeping a good thought for you & yours.
corn!!!
very good
Proposal on how to deal with the archaiological site:
Call it Knossoi and take out the concrete new parts and put them in a replica of the current site as it is now. Then given the restored original site, make another replica nearby that is more faithful to our current understanding of their civilisation.
The trouble is archeology is always destruction, there is not going to be much of the original site left. Abetted of course by plopping a concrete building on the site. Given the archeological practices of two centuries ago there is not going to be much in the way of detailed dig records either.
Wait until the Sea Peoples come a Knossosing on your door. Don't be bull-headed. 😂
Remember the British put down the socialist Republic after WW2 and backed a fascist regime and had a monarch installed.
Jeez it's usually the CIA that do that 😅
@@batt3ryac1dwho do you think the United States learned it from?
😂😂 my life is a lie. I've seen these images hundreds of time when reading history. I never knew there were so many fakes.
Minos Prime
my middle and last name happen to be arthur evans
I am Groot.
This video is special indeed. The eloquent narration told me about a dramatic compelling time when 2 harshly beaten souls brought back to history the remains of a dormant civilization, forgotten for longer than 3000 years. Lots of food for thought to find here.
Most decent British archaeologist^^
I have one thing to say, WTF.
🫀🪐🫀
Just because you stand on dirt, doesnt mean you are descended of thepeople buried forgotten under it.
Thats why you check the genetics