WORLD CIVILIZATION

Detailed explanation-1: -Although they lived in what is now Greece and influenced Greek society, historians don’t consider the Minoans to be Greek. This is because the Minoans didn’t speak the Greek language. The first people to speak Greek, and therefore the first to be considered Greek, were the Mycenaeans.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Minoans were not Greeks nor do they appear to be closely related. What seems clear however is that they helped to shape the early Greek civilization, later immortalized by Homer and other Greek poets.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Minoan civilization spoke a Minoan language which in all likelihood was unrelated to any known language family, most definitely not to the Indo-European one (which happens to include Greek).

Detailed explanation-4: -The Minoans lived on the Greek islands and built a huge palace on the island of Crete. The Mycenaeans lived mostly on mainland Greece and were the first people to speak the Greek language. The Minoans built a large civilization on the island of Crete that flourished from around 2600 BC to 1400 BC.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Minoan language is the language (or languages) of the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete written in the Cretan hieroglyphs and later in the Linear A syllabary.