Bronze Age history revisited

Posted by Robin Fowler May 3, 2006

This discovery of a fossilized olive branch is potentially rewriting the history of the Bronze Age Meditterranean. Scientists have dated the olive branch, which has helped to place the date of the violent eruption on Thera about 100 years earlier, to around 1600 B.C. This has huge historical ramifications in that the New Kingdom Egyptian culture, which the Minoans were thought to have traded with and been influenced by, would not have existed at all yet. Rather, they likely traded with other cultures, such as as the Caananites. This opens the floodgates to a whole new set of questions for classical archaeologists, as well as answers some older ones.

That's the thing about archaeology. It is a delicate and dynamic science that is capable of changing long-held beliefs and historical traditions with even the slightest discovery.