The Early Cyclades

The Cyclades,a group of islands in the Aegean Sea to the east of mainland Greece,eventually played an important part in Greek civilization,though at first they were sparsely populated. Radiocarbon dates from excavations throughout the islands tell us that farmers had settled on Naxos as early as the fifth millennium B.C.E.Between 4000 and 3000 B.C.E.,farming communities flourished on Andros,relatively close to the mainland,as far out as Paros,and possibly on Mykonos,in the heart of the Cyclades.As far as one can tell,the early settlers avoided smaller islands,with their tiny patches of arable soil and often sparse water supplies.Milos was rich in obsidian,a volcanic glass used for tools and jewelry,and the island was certainly visited for fishing and fine-grained stone,but the first date for permanent occupation remains an open question.Throughout the Cyclades,the founding settlers seem to have preferred larger and medium-sized islands, even if they were far from the mainland.This speaks volumes about the seaworthiness of what by now must have been fairly large boats. Quite apart from anything else,such vessels would have had to transport sheep and goats across open water for as long as two days.

Why did people colonize islands far out in the Aegean?One theory argues that regular visits in search of obsidian,or for tuna fishing in otherwise inaccessible waters,might have led in due time to permanent settlement.Archaeological finds on the mainland do not support the obsidian hypothesis,for early obsidian finds are merely fragments,apparently carried back haphazardly.It was only much later,some centuries before 3000 B.C.E.,that much greater quantities of obsidian arrived on the mainland,deliberately prepared in a variety of ways,arriving as cargoes that included carefully hewed blocks of the volcanic glass.Whether greater loads resulted from colonization or simply from an increase in the tempo of exploitation and visitation is a matter for discussion.Nor is fishing a particularly compelling reason for colonization.Fish were never more than a dietary supplement in these waters,where marine life was far from abundant. Tuna migrations move rapidly and unpredictably,usually heading south in the fall.Laborious voyages in search of such an unreliable food source were not worth the trouble or the risk,given the difficulty of predicting them.

Living permanently on the Cyclades was never easy,for survival depended on diversifying one’s crops among carefully selected microenvironments.Barley,wheat,and pulses (a plant group including peas and beans)were staples,while goats and sheep thrived on rugged island slopes.Olives and vines became important crops later,when they were widely traded commodities,but almost certainly not in earlier millennia.The uncertainty of the Aegean agricultural year meant that storage of foods of all kinds was of great importance,a process that must have involved sharing among neighboring communities and perhaps even between one island and another.Unlike mainland farmers,islanders could not fall back on a cushion of reliable wild plant foods or game like fallow deer.The realities of daily life meant that most island communities were small and widely dispersed over generally rugged island terrain. Populations were tiny,to the point that people in the Cyclades were a scarce resource.Few islands attained self-sufficient populations and marriage networks of about three hundred to five hundred people. There were many more people living in a single early Mesopotamian city such as Uruk,one of the earliest urban settlements in the world in the fourth millennium B.C.E.,than in the entire Cyclades.Inevitably, then,there was a high degree of interdependence among the islands, for exchange of food and other commodities and mobility were the only long-term survival strategies.

This constant movement touched every facet of island existence- marriage and kin ties,planting and harvest,food storage,the need for toolmaking stone and other commodities as prosaic as grinding stones,movements triggered by drought,excessive rainfall,and other short-and long-term climatic events,chance migrations of tuna shoals,and all the complex demands of ceremonial life and ritual observance.Seafaring operated here within ever-changing lattices of interaction that linked people over considerable distances and across often turbulent seas.?

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?The Cyclades,a group of islands in the Aegean Sea to the east of mainland Greece,eventually played an important part in Greek civilization,though at first they were sparsely populated. Radiocarbon dates from excavations throughout the islands tell us that farmers had settled on Naxos as early as the fifth millennium B.C.E.Between 4000 and 3000 B.C.E.,farming communities flourished on Andros,relatively close to the mainland,as far out as Paros,and possibly on Mykonos,in the heart of the Cyclades.As far as one can tell,the early settlers avoided smaller islands,with their tiny patches of arable soil and often sparse water supplies.Milos was rich in obsidian,a volcanic glass used for tools and jewelry,and the island was certainly visited for fishing and fine-grained stone,but the first date for permanent occupation remains an open question.Throughout the Cyclades,the founding settlers seem to have preferred larger and medium-sized islands, even if they were far from the mainland.This speaks volumes about the seaworthiness of what by now must have been fairly large boats. Quite apart from anything else,such vessels would have had to transport sheep and goats across open water for as long as two days.

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