Among the more important puzzles of Minoan society is its comparatively sudden emergence. During the centuries before 2600 BC there were important changes on the Island, and thereafter very rapid progress in almost every area of life.

Villages and towns grew up where previously there had been only isolated settlements, and with them came craft specialists:potters, stonecutters, metalworkers, jewellers,weavers. Many of these new settlements were in the east and south of the island, and there was for the first time significant habitation on the coast and near natural harbours. It seems safe to assume that these changes were wrought by a new migration of people from the east, bringing with them new technologie methods of agriculture and styles of pottery, but most importantly, perhaps, a knowledge of seafaring and trade- The olive and the vine - which need little tending and therefore help free a labour force - began to be produced alongside cereal crops.

Copper tools replaced stone ones and were themselves later refined with the introduction of bronze. Art developed rapidly, with characteristic Vasiliki ware and other pottery styles; gold jewellery; and stone jars of exceptional quality, based originally on Egyptian styles. Significantly, large quantities of seal stones have been found too. Almost certainty the mark of a mercantile people. They were used to sign letters and documents, but especially to seal packets, boxes or doors as proof that they had not been opened: the designs - scorpions or poisonous spiders - were often meant as a further deterrent to robbery.

At the same time new methods of burial appear - Tholos and chamber tombs in which riches were buried with the dead. These appear to have bee