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So we went back to Athens for our last day in Greece. When we arrived back at the hotel (the same one we had stayed in last week) on Friday morning, they told us they had overbooked the cheaper rooms, so they upgraded us to their most expensive room. It was truly awesome. We had spent a lot of time talking with the staff and getting to know them before we left for Crete, so I guess they liked us the most. Goes to show you should be nice to people. Here are some pictures of the room.That was a very comfortable bed.This was the view from the balcony outside our room. You can see the Acropolis.This is the view at night of the Acropolis. We decided not to go out for dinner since we had such a cool room and great balcony.

This is the view of Hadrian's gate from our hotel room balcony. We went out and got some gyros and various Greek pastries and ate on the patio table. The room also came with a complementary bottle of champagne. So we enjoyed that too.

Heraklion

For our last day in Crete, we had planned to travel to another two Minoan sites, Phaestos and Gortyna. Though our guidebook said that 8 buses a day went to Phaestos (stopping in Gortyna on the way), apparently that is true only during the tourist season, which begins in June. The public bus website did not have any buses listed to Phaestos. We decided to ask at the hotel front desk for the attendant to check to make sure we read the bus schedule correctly.

The hotel staff could not have been kinder—however, they are Greek. So when I told the man at the desk I wanted to take a bus to Phaestos, he immediately launched into a ten minute explanation for why I should rent a car rather than take a bus. However, he was Greek, so it seemed more like he was debating passionately with me because he was right in my face and loudly detailing his argument. It was hilarious—just like a movie stereotype.

It's hard to do it justice in writing, but his main points were that the bus was slow, and if I had a car I had the freedom to do whatever I want to do. I also could go on to Matala, which is a coastal town nearby with caves where hippies including Joan Baez used to hang out in the late 60's and early 70's. There is a nice beach, so we could go for a swim, get something to eat, and have some drinks. By the time we did all of that it would probably cost us only 10 Euros more than taking a bus, and what is 10 Euros for a good time?

On several occasions we had a Greek person tell us it would cost "almost the same" if we took a tour or a taxi rather than take the bus. Their definition of "almost" is quite different than mine. In actuality, most of the time it was about half the price to take the bus. Apparently, Greeks are not very good at comparing prices. Plus, their attitude is, "What is a little more for a better time?" This may explain their current financial situation.

I actually read an Athens Times article about people struggling with the government austerity package. An elementary school teacher was very upset because with her pay cut she would no longer be able to go out for drinks after work with her friends. What she meant by that was that she could only go out for drinks once a week and not every night. That was funny to me, since most middle class workers in the United States cannot afford to go out for drinks every night either.

We were not feeling adventuresome enough to drive. The roads are typically poorly marked on Crete, people drive pretty crazy, and it can be difficult to rent a car for one day (they want to give you a weekly package). In any event, we decided we would use the day to rest and explore Heraklion, the city we were staying in while on Crete. Heraklion is a port town and the 5th largest city in Greece. I would not call it a particularly pretty city, but it does have its charms. It is surrounded by a large wall and a fortification that extends out into the sea. For most of its history, Crete and Heraklion were fought over. Crete was part of the Roman empire and easily passed to the administration of the Byzantine empire once Rome fell. In the 10th century it was captured by Spanish muslims and turned into a pirate state. Eventually it fell back under the control of Byzantium, until the 4th Crusade when it was acquired by Venice in 1204.

The Venetians tried to impose Roman Catholicism on the Greek Orthodox believers of Crete with poor results. There was a lot of dissent until the Venetians and Cretans united to fight their common enemy, the Turks. The Turks took most of the island but could not breach Heraklion's defenses. They besieged Heraklion for 22 years. This was the longest seige in history. The walls and the fortified harbor are remains of the Venetian defenses. Some of the stones used in the walls were gathered by the Venetians from the ruins of the town (not the palace) of Minoan Knossos nearby. Eventually, the Turks prevailed and would rule, beginning in the 1700s, amid much dissent until the Cretans finally won their independence in 1898. It is a long and bloody history full of pointlessness and great atrocities committed over and over again in the name of religion. Unfortunately, too much of history is the same story—Crete is just a particularly good example.

We learned a lot of the history of Crete at a local museum. It inspired me to write a novel about the history of Crete during the time of the siege. There are so many themes here—the conflict between religions, the use of religion as a justification for power, the conflict between Christianity's denial of empire (well, in its original teaching) but also its duty to stand against evil. Unfortunately, I cannot write, so my novel will go unfinished.

At night we went out into the town. We enjoyed eating in Heraklion—lots of fresh seafood. A study in the 1960s found that Cretans lived a long time and the study attributed this increased lifespan to the diet. Cretans eat a lot of seafood, vegetables (particularly wild greens and olives), whole grains, olive oil, nuts, red wine, honey, and very little red meat. They do not eat much processed food—which is really true of most of Greece. You can go to a bus station or a gas station and you will not see things like twinkies, but you can get awesome homemade pastries. Greeks won't put up with inferior pastries.

Most cities in Greece really come alive at night. Greeks do not usually eat until 10 PM or so, and they stay out until midnight or later. The town centers are always hopping. Heraklion was one big party, even on weeknights after 9 or so. Every Cretan within 50 miles was there along with a smattering of German and English tourists. People mostly walk around, smoke, and drink coffee, wine, or ouzo. Quite a few people play backgammon while waiting for the food or drinks at restaurants. No one eats inside—but the temperature is in the mid 70s, so you cannot blame them.

They have a type of restaurant called an ouzeri. Basically, it is the equivalent to our beer and wing joints. You can get ouzo and other alcoholic drinks along with appetizers and grilled food. The picture on the left is in front of an ouzeri. They had this great charcoal grill set up. Beside the grill you can see a bowl filled with octopus tentacles. They grill the food for the customers right there. The night before, the guys working the grill had a hooka pipe set up. It was pretty cool. The guys running the grill assured me that he had the best grilled octopus tentacle in all of Greece.

That is another peculiarity of Greece. The restaurant employees practically yell at you to come in. They could have every table packed, but they are still trying to convince everyone that walks by that they need to come in and eat. Usually, they tell you they have the best the food in all of Greece. We walked by so many places that had the best (fill in the blank), that it was like Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average. It's kind of threatening at first when you are not used to it, but they usually drop it fairly quickly. A couple of times I said I had already had something to eat, and they gave me a card and said, "Maybe tomorrow for lunch."

Crime is rare in Crete, and much of it is perpetrated by tourists. People frequently hike safely around Crete and even do it alone. We saw one lady get her purse stolen at a restaurant. She had it hanging on the back of her chair and a guy in a scooter drove by and snatched it. Judging by everyone's reaction at the restaurant (and we were the only non-Greeks there), this was quite unusual. Despite that incident, we always felt safe in Greece, even at night. I can honestly say that if someone was messing with us, I am pretty sure a group of angry Greek men would quickly beat that person down. The Greeks have got your back.

Epimenides Paradox

Going to Crete made me think of the famous Epimenides paradox. Epimenides was a philosopher who lived in Knossos around 6th century B.C. His most well known statement was "All Cretans are liars." The reasons it is a paradox is because Epimenides was a Cretan. So if all Cretans are liars that would include Epimenides and so his statement must be a lie. That means that all Cretans tell the truth. However, we derived the statement "all Cretans tell the truth" by positing that Epimenides was a liar. See the paradox?

The statement, "all Cretans are liars" may sound familiar because Paul quoted it in his letter to Titus. Titus was put in charge of the church in Crete. Paul's letter mainly gives advice about how Paul should lead the church in Crete. In verse 12, Paul tells Titus, "One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own said, 'Cretans are liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." Clearly, Paul did not take Epimenides statement as a paradox nor did anyone else back then. It was understood to mean that a liar is someone who lies most of the time or some time but not all the time.

In modern times, people began to view the statement as a paradox. However it was treated as kind of fun thing to think about and really no more than that. No one saw it as particularly useful.

Traditionally, it was Aristotle who wrote the last word on logic. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new group arose working on a different type of logical called formal logic. Formal logic breaks the world down into propositions which are proven to be true according to the rules of the formal system. This is called the verification principle.

This was especially influential in the field of mathematics. Attempts were made to build formal systems of mathematics. Bertrand Russell attempted to build an entire system of mathematics based on formal logic in his work Principia Mathematica. The outcome of this project is that it means that mathematics is entirely a human construct. Mathematics, is merely a logical game where we completely define the rules. There is no independent existence. In effect it makes "man the measure of all things," which is a quote from another Greek called Protagoras who lived in the 5th century.

Protagoras' statement is quite radical and typical of a school of thought called Sophism. According to the Sophist there was no objective truth. The Sophist taught the sons of rich Greek nobles the art of rhetoric or oratory for high fees. Since they did not believe in truth they mostly taught their pupils how to argue. It did not really matter which side was true since there was no truth - so it was the force of your argument that was really important.

They were opposed by Socrates and several of Plato's dialogues recount the arguments Socrates used against them. Mostly, they were a variation of an argument that goes like this - so you say that there is no truth and therefore we cannot know anything objectively? However, the statement "there is no truth" is an objective statement. So in refuting truth and objectivity you are using truth and objectivity. It is a paradox kind of like Epimenides' paradox.

Interestingly, the same line of argument was used against the verification principle. Here is it how it worked - so you say the only things we know to be true are by what we can prove through the verification principle? Well have you bothered to verify the verification principle? See same problem.

Kurt Godel, was a 20th century Czech logician and mathematician, and hated formal logic. He did not believe that mathematics was something constructed by human beings, rather it was something that had an independent existence and that man discovers. In 1931, he effectively destroyed the formal mathematical project by publishing his "Incompleteness Theorem" The Incompleteness Theorem proved any mathematical system complex enough to account for arithmetic cannot prove itself. He did that by trying to prove the statement "this statement is false." Essentially, this is the same as Epimenides' paradox. Turns out it was useful.

The reason Godel so passionately hated formal logic and believed so strongly in the independent existence of mathematic was because of a class he took in college. That class was a philosophy class in which he learned about Plato. Plato wrote about the independent existence of the world of the forms. The world of the forms is the perfect, unchanging world of which our world is a crude copy. The world of the forms contains truth. The world we experience by our senses is only a shadow of the world of the forms. Mathematics fits perfectly in this conception since it is an idealized version of our own world like the world of the forms.

So Betrand Russell using the arguments of Protagoras and the Sophists is defeated again by Plato using a statement of Epimenides by Kurt Godel. There is nothing new under the sun.

Gorge of the Dead

Up until now, we have been doing mostly touristy activities in Greece. We planned to go to Kato Zakros, which has a Minioan site, as kind of our "off the beaten path" part of the trip. Kato Zakros is on the east coast of Crete. It's pretty remote and the pictures looked beautiful. Kato Zakros also has a nice beach. We took a bus that went to a town called Sitia, which took about 3 hours, and then another bus to a town called Zakros. Kato Zakros is located about 2.5 miles from Zakros, and there is no bus to get there.

So you have two choices. One, you can take a taxi, or two, you can hike the 2.5 miles through a place called the Gorge of the Dead. The Gorge of the Dead is named because Minoan graves have been found in the caves that line the gorge. According to our guide book, the gorge emptied out right into the place we would be staying. I love an adventure, so that sounded awesome to me.

Tamzen thought it would be better to take a taxi since we had our luggage with us. I said I would be glad to carry our luggage if she would go on the hike. She was still skeptical. When we arrived at Zakros, a nice German lady asked us if we would like to split a taxi to Kato Zakros. At that point, things had been going so well, that Tamzen decided maybe we should go ahead and hike the gorge. So off we were to the Gorge of the Dead.

We saw a sign pointing us to the Gorge of the Dead trail. So off we went to adventure and beyond!

In the above picture you an see the beautiful Cretan countryside. The town of Zakros is on the left.

They grow mostly olive trees here, but also orange and lemon trees. They have a lot of goats too. We liked seeing the goats. They made funny noises and had bells on their necks. However, we really had not seen a gorge at this point. It was more like we were hiking through some dude's olive plantation.

Then we looked down the road and said, "Ah look, the Gorge of the Dead." It looked pretty disappointing to us, but oh well. Then the path did not really take us there—it more dead ended in an olive grove. Getting lost in an olive grove is worse than it sounds. You see, the whole island of Crete is an olive grove. Fun fact—there are 62 olive trees for every one Cretan. In any event, we saw a road, so we went to the road. We knew there was like one road on this side of the island and it went to Kato Zakros, so we walked along the road.

The road ended up running alongside this gorge. We were excited because it was a large gorge with caves. This must be the real Gorge of the Dead.
Also it emptied out into a a little town on the coast. We went to the town, looking for the place we were going to stay called Yiannis Retreat. We found a place with a sign that said Yiannis Retreat. A nice British lady answered the door but told us this was her condo and not the place we were looking for. She told us the place we were looking for was down the road. We went down the road but did not see it. It turns out she was not a nice British lady at all. Fortunately, we saw a restaurant called Akrogiali Taverna run by a guy named Nicos. We had read about Akrogiali run by a guy named Nicos in the guidebook as one of the good places to eat in Kato Zakros. We stopped there to call Yianni's to find out where they were located. We were a little disappointed. The town looked run down and not very nice. Not at all like the pictures on the website.

We found out why. We were actually in the wrong town. We were in a town 8 kilometers south of Kato Zakros (I don't really know how far 8 kilometer is, like 3 or 4 miles maybe). Later we found out we had taken one of many hiking trails in the Gorge of the Dead area. However, this one led no where near the Gorge of the Dead and the road we got on took us further south of Kato Zakros, bypassing the Gorge of the Dead entirely.

Tamzen explained the situation to the lady at the place we were staying. The lady told us to go to Zakros and get a taxi. That was not what we wanted to hear since we had walked for about 3 and half hours at this point. Right now I thought that Tamzen was probably going to add another body to the Gorge of the Dead. In any event, it was just a miscommunication and they sent a taxi. The taxi drove us exactly past where all we had spent the last few hours walking.

Fortunately, we fell in love with Kato Zakros. This is the view from our room. You can see the sea in the background. When we arrived at our room, I was very thirsty. There was a bottle on the table. In Greece, the water is not bad for you, but it usually doesn't taste great, so everyone drinks bottled water. As I said, I was thirsty, so I took a big swig out of the bottle. It turns out it was not water but Raki. For those not in the know, Raki is a beverage made by fermenting the leftover parts of the grape after you have made wine. Its then heavily distilled. Substitute corn for leftover grape parts and you have moonshine. So that is essentially what Raki is - Greek moonshine only with grape stems, leaves, and peels rather than corn mash. It is a tasty beverage but not what you want when you are thirsty.

This is the view from the taverna we ate at - the real Akrogiali run by Nicos. It was awesome. They had a big charcoal grill beside the restaurant. Not like a Weber grill or anything but a homemade grill. They took fresh fish and grilled it whole over the grill with lemon, olive oil, and oregano. This was probably the best food we had in Greece. Tamzen had a wonderful fresh swordfish filet.

We knew it was fresh because we saw this outside the restaurant. Sorry I could not figure out how to turn the picture upright.

Here we are on the beach outside of our room - see Tamzen did not kill me after all. The water is really that blue. Homer called the Aegean sea the "wine dark sea." I am not sure what kind of wine he was drinking.

Look how clear the water is.

Oh, outside our hotel room we saw this. This is actually the Gorge of the Dead. You can see a sign on the left. We decided we really did not want to hike it.

Knossos Artifacts

Great example of the high level of craftsmanship by the Minoans. This is a gold pendant featuring two bees depositing honey in a honeycomb. It features three different gold working techniques and dates from 1800 B.C.
Cool octopus jar.
The famous 'snake goddess," as you can tell by certain of her features, she was a fertility goddess. She is holding snakes in her hand and has a cat on her head. Its supposed to symbolize her domination over nature, but it could be she is just a crazy cat lady.
Linear A, one of the earliest forms of writing. If you can decipher it, you can become very famous.
This is the bull leaper from around 1500 B.C. It is incomplete, obviously, but notice what a naturalistic pose the leaper is in. The leaper looks like a modern gymnast. Anyone who knows anything about art knows how difficult it is to draw or sculpt humans in such natural poses.
The bull jumping fresco found in the palace of Knossos. A central part of Minoan civilization religion performed in conjunction with worship. It was kind of like an ancient rodeo in which participants would try to leap onto and summersault off the moving bull.
Stunning quartz jar found at the Minoan palace complex in Zakros where we are going tomorrow.
The Phaistos Disc, one of the great mysteries of archaeology. This dates from about 1800-1600 B.C. and contains 241 signs. No one has yet to crack the code and determine the meaning or purpose of the disc. Now that I have taken a photo, you can try to figure it out.
Minoan helmet made from boar tusks. I think I need to kill some boar and make my own.
Alabaster vase given as a gift from Thutmose III, Pharaoh of Egypt. You can see the hieroglyphs on the front of the vase bearing his name. Thutmose III is one of the candidates for the Pharaoh of oppression at the time of Moses.

More Knossos Pictures

This is a storage room. The walkway would have been lined with oil lamps. The giant jar in the center would have contained olive oil or wine. During the earthquakes in 1450 B.C. the casks were overturned and the lamps caught the spilled wine and oil on fire. You can see evidence of the fire on the blackened stone on the left side.
Reconstruction of bullhorns. We know from frescoes that these horns would have lined the walls. The bull was important as a fertility symbol.
Giant pots used to carry honey, wine, and other trade goods.
Part of the drainage system at Knossos

This was a difficult picture to get, but these are clay pipes from before 1700 BC. On the right you can sort of make out how they were fitted together.

See, it's like a labyrinth.
The Minoans used ornamental peacock feathers in their headdresses. Below is a peacock wandering around Knossos.
"Queen's Room" decorated with dolphins.
Grand Staircase leading to the King and Queen's quarters. Staircases were difficult to do in the ancient world. It's quite spectacular, the level of skill involved.
Minoan throne room. The throne is original and made of Alabaster.

Knossos

Knossos was the chief city of the Minoan civilization. The Minoan civilization flourished from about 2000 B.C. to 1450 B.C., mostly on Crete. The Minoans are not technically Greek. They did not speak a Greek language. We know they had a writing system called Linear A, but it has yet to be deciphered. It was not quite an alphabet, but rather a syllabary where each symbol stood for a syllable. That was quite a bit of an advancement from the cuneiform of the near east, where every symbol stood for a word. With 1500 cuneiform signs to memorize, only the highly educated scribes could read. The Minoans simplified this to slightly under 100 characters to learn.

Sometime around 2700 B.C. the Minoan settlers developed metal tools and agriculture. These two advancements led to the development of a highly organized society by 2000 B.C. Knossos was their chief city and seemed to mainly focus on religious activities. Mostly these religious activities centered around fertility cults. Unlike later Greek cities, the Minoan cities did not have defensive walls. Knossos is not fortified and is approachable through gates on all 4 sides.

"Minoan" actually is not the real name of the people. We do not know what they called themselves. King Minos was the legendary name of the king of Crete. "Minos" was likely the title rather his actual name—like "Pharaoh." King Minos was also the king in the myth that had the labyrinth with the Minotaur. Its easy to see how the later Greeks may have come up with that idea since the remains of the four-story-high palace complex at Knossos would have looked a bit

like a maze, and the Minoans worshipped the bull.

Sometime around 1700 B.C. an earthquake destroyed many of the Minoan cities in Crete. The Minoans simply rebuilt them and their civilization flourished more than ever. Their empire was similar to the Mycaneans in that they made most of their money trading wine, grain, and olive oil. They traded mostly with the Egyptians. One of their frescoes contains a picture of a monkey and a papyrus plant. Both of these are native to Egypt but not Crete. Minoan paintings have also been found in Avaris, Egypt. The painting on the right is a reproduction of the fresco of the monkey picking papyrus.

The most impressive feature of Knossos is the plumbing system. The complex actually had running water. Water was collected from cisterns on the roof and then carried through the rooms in clay pipes. Several drainage ditches were dug to get rid of the used water. Not only that, they piped in water from two separate sources. Rain water collected in cisterns was used for cleaning clothes and such. Drinking water was piped in from a water source at a nearby mountain. Not only that, they had working toilets! In the picture to the left you can sort of make it out. The square hole in the ground drains to the outside of the living quarters. A pipe (this one is metal, to give you an idea of how it would have worked; the Minoans would have used clay pipes) would bring water from the cisterns on the roof four stories above. So sometime around 370o years ago, the Minoans would have had running water and flush toilets.

This would have been a huge deal since running water would have meant better hygiene. Adequate drainage without standing water would mean fewer mosquitoes and less malaria. Proper disposal of human waste would have meant less dysentery, which as anyone who has played Oregon Trail knows, will kill you.

Ultimately, the Minoan civilization fell when a volcanic explosion on the island of Santorini in 1450 B.C. devastated the surrounding islands (including Crete). Most of the destruction was the result of a powerful tsunami and earthquakes following the eruption. The people would eventually move into the mountains. Trade collapsed, and ultimately they were conquered by the Mycaneans, who adapted Linear A to their own Greek language. Examples of this writing, called Linear B, still survive. The picture to the right shows some examples of Linear A and Linear B.