Tea at Trianon: The Fall of Minoan Civilization

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

The Fall of Minoan Civilization

From The Daily Mail:

Experts once thought that the eruption of a volcano named Thera, on what is now the holiday island of Santorini, in around 1642–1540 BC had destroyed the Minoans. This eruption has been rivalled in modern times only by the colossal explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. It was thought to have triggered a tsunami that travelled south to Crete, destroying the Minoan port at the Bronze Age city of Knossos.

Evidence of destruction dating to around the time of the eruption has been found in various settlements on Crete — and was originally connected to the Thera disaster. However, the translation of unusual script on a set of tablets — the language was dubbed Linear B — on Minoan-era tablets helped overturn the end-by-tsunami theory. It took decades, but Linear B was identified as a form of ancient Greek. This gave evidence that the Mycenaean civilisation from the mainland had heavily changed, but continued, the Minoan culture. (Read more.)

Hans Georg Lundahl said...: 2600 BC - 1400 BC.

Presumably carbon dated, which means some dates are inflated, and "2600 BC" would normally be c. 1700 BC, when Joseph dies in Egypt.

"1400 BC" would be only a little more recent, if that, and would be during the era of the Judges, prior to Trojan war which seems to be correctly carbon dated if Troy VIa (or whichever it was) is the right level. By then the carbon 14 level had reached the present value of 100 pmC.; October 29, 2019 at 11:19:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Fascinating!; October 29, 2019 at 3:27:00 PM EDT