Description
Now namesake to his home island's international airport, the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis wrote, 'There is a kind of flame in Crete – let us call it "soul" – something more powerful than either life or death'. He was on to something: since the Minoan people entered the Bronze Age around 3100 BCE, this largest of Greece's many islands has been host to Europe's oldest technologically advanced civilisation. The Minoan culture existed for more than 2,000 years and may have been brought down in part by the massive volcanic eruption of Thera on present-day Santorini, another Aegean island. But true to Kazantzakis' words, humans persisted in inhabiting the island despite hardship, and today it's home to more than 600,000 people.