ABSTRACT
This chapter presents that the Minoan's scientific observations are based on information from as far back as the Paleolithic and Neolithic Eras. During the last few days of the final season at Hacilar, in 1960, James Mellaart and his crew found nearly twenty intact female figurines on the plastered floors of some of the mud-brick houses. 'Mellaart has discovered the remains of a culture so sophisticated as to shatter all previous notions about Late Neolithic man', declared Time magazine, which also published one of Arlette's photos of a sitting figurine. The British press was equally ebullient: the 'statuettes of the Mother Goddess', the Daily Telegraph reported, 'are the first of their sort in the history of art'. Mellaart also concluded, based on preliminary determinations of the sexes of the skeletons later carried out by physical anthropologists, that there were important differences in the way men and women had been buried.
