Word: minoans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Thirty years ago, my girlfriend and I took an overnight ferry from Piraeus, the port of Athens, to Iraklion, on the island of Crete. After mooching around the Minoan ruins at Knossos, we hitchhiked to the wildly beautiful lands in the west of the island. The girlfriend became my wife, and every year or two since-15 times in all-we've returned, to the same village, the same indescribable light, the same White Mountains plunging into the same wine-dark...
...dating has been recalibrated in recent decades to give archaeologists strong certainties about the ages of key artifacts for Europe's prehistory, from the drawings in France's Chauvet Cave (32,000 years old), to possibly Neanderthal milk teeth found in Cavallo, Italy (31,000 years old), to the Minoan civilization on Crete (3,700 years old). That means there is always the prospect of a physical discovery - an agricultural site that doesn't fit in time or space, say - that can blow existing theories out of the water...