History of the Cyclades read certain authors who say that the islands’ population is, of all the regions of Greece, the only original one, and has not been subjected to external admixtures. However, the Cyclades have very often known different destinies. Their natural resources and their potential role as trade-route stopovers has allowed them to be peopled since the Neolithic. Thanks to these assets, they experienced a brilliant cultural flowering in the 3rd millennium BC: the Cycladic civilisation. The proto-historical powers, the Minoans and then the Mycenaeans, made their influence known there. The Cyclades had a new zenith in the Archaic period (8th –
History of the Cyclades from the Cyclades. Also entering the city that year were 231,000 lbs of wheat; 150,000 lbs of oil; 58,660 lbs of silk from Tinos; 14,400 lbs of cheese; 7,635 lbs of wool; 5,019 lbs of rice; 2,833 lbs of lambskin; 2,235 lbs of cotton; 1,881 lbs of wax; 1,065 lbs of sponge. The Cyclades were also the centre of a contraband wheat trade to the West. In years with good harvests, the profits were large, but in years of poor harvests, the activity depended on the good will of the Ottoman authorities, who desired either a larger share of the