Chapter 3.3 Reading Quiz: Seafaring Traders Extend Boundaries

Name: ______

Date: ______Period: ______

Seafarers
Series of City-states…eventually set up colonies every 30 miles or so along the coastline
Famous for their purple dye and an alphabet
Phoenician alphabet then adopted by the Greeks...each symbol stood for a sound

Legendary King of the Minoans in Crete (archaeologists name the society after him)…possibly lived around 1900BCE…story of a Minotaur that he kept in a labyrinth and fed children (preferably Athenian Children)

Chapter 3.3: Seafaring Traders Extend Boundaries

Buddhism spread to Southeast Asia and the East Asia through missionaries, and Buddhist traders…same process took place in Mediterranean…traders in the region carried many new ideas from one society to another.

Minoans were a powerful seafaring people, dominated trade in eastern Mediterranean from 2000 to 1400 BCE
Minoans lived in Crete…in the Aegean Sea
Minoans produced fine painted pottery…traded and exported art and culture
Minoan culture had an enormous influence on Greece…Crete as a “stepping stone” for cultural exchange through the Mediterranean World

Archaeologists in the 19th century excavated Knossos, Minoan capital city…did not have walls/ fortifications
Archaeologists named the civilization Minoa after King Minos…according to legend, Minos was a king who kept a half-human, half-bull monster, called the Minotaur locked inside a labyrinth
Important sports: boxing, wrestling, bull-leaping
Many Minoan works depict women in religious ceremonies…did women have a higher rank in society? Mother Earth Goddess…priestesses in charge of some shrines
Minoans sacrificed bulls and other animals to their gods…also evidence of human sacrifice

Minoan civilization ended about 1200BCE
Not sure of the cause…natural disaster? Overpopulation? Invasion?
Series of earthquakes in the 1400’sBCE- Minoan cities were rebuilt
1470BCE: Earthquake, Volcanic Eruption on Thera, tidal wave and rain of white volcanic ash…Minoans didn’t fully recover
Invasions after that?

About 1100BCE- after decline of Crete, the most powerful traders on the Mediterranean were the Phoenicians (mainly area of modern day Lebanon)
Number of wealthy city-states around the Mediterranean that sometimes competed with each other
Important cities in Phoenicia: Byblos, Tyre, Sidon
Shipbuilders and Seafarers…ventured beyond the Straits of Gibraltar…perhaps to Britain…maybe all the way around the continent of Africa
Phoenicians often sacrificed first-born children and animals to please their cruel gods and goddesses

Phoenician’s most important city-states in eastern Mediterranean were Sidon and Tyre…production of purple dye…Byblos- traded papyrus
Phoenicians set up colonies along coast of Africa and Sicily, Spain, Sardinia…about 30 miles apart (distance a Phoenician ship could travel in one day)
Carthage= Greatest Phoenician Colony…founded in about 725BCE in Northern Africa
Purple Dye was produced from a snail called a murex…used 60,000 snails to produce one pound of dye

Merchants needed a way of recording transactions clearly and quickly
Phoenicians developed a writing system that used symbols to represent sounds
Phonetic system: one sign was used for one sound…word Alphabet comes from Phoenicians
Greeks adopted Phoenician alphabet and changed the form of the some of the letters…most writing on papyrus…made learning more accessible
Phoenician eastern cities were captured by Assyrians in 842BCE…later under control of Babylonians, and later of King Cyrus of Persia

Trading in ancient times connected the Mediterranean Sea with other centers of world commerce, like South and East Asia
Land routes between India and Afghanistan
Sea routes crossed the Arabian Sea to Persian Gulf and the Red Sea
Use of monsoon winds across the Arabian Sea
Phoenician traders made crucial contributions to world civilization…contemporaneous with the Hebrews.