Cretes first inhabitants. Neolithic cave dwellers apparently reached the island around 7000 BC. They came. most probably, from Asia Minor, or less likely from Syria, Palestine or North Africa, bringing with them the basics of Stone Age culture - tools of wood, stone and bone; crude pottery: and simple cloth. A possible clue to the origins of these peoples may lie in the importance of bull cults at certain centres in Neolithic Anatolia.

Development over the next three thousand years was almost imperceptibly slow but gradually, whether through new migrations and influences or internal dynamics, advances were made. Elementary agriculture was practised. with domestic animals and basic crops. Pottery (the oldest samples of which were found beneath the palace at Knossos) became more sophisticated, with better-made domestic utensils and clay figurines of humans, animals and especially of a fat mother goddess or fertility figure. Obsidian imported from the island of Milos was used too. And though caves continued to be inhabited, simple rectangular huts of mud bricks were also built, with increasing skill and complexity as the era wore on.

One of the most important of the Neolithic settlements was at Knossos where two remarkable dwellings have been revealed below the Central Court, and there is abundant evidence that many other sites, of later habitation were used at this time - Malia, Festos, Ayia Triadha, the Hania area - as were most of the caves later to assume religious significance.