Minoan civilization palace like Knossos for their own use. Several authors have noted evidence that Minoan civilization had exceeded its environmental carrying capacity, with archaeological recovery at Knossos indicating deforestation in the region near the civilization's later stages. A 2013 archeogenetics study compared skeletal mtDNA from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave in the Lasithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years ago, to 135 samples from Greece, Anatolia, western and northern Europe, North Africa and Egypt. The researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those
Minoan pottery not so clear as to make correlation with discovered artifacts easy. Using a drawing of the "Contents of the Tomb of the Tripod Hearth" at Zafer Papoura from Evans' "Palace of Minos", which depicts LM II bronze vessels, many in the forms of ceramic ones, Ventris and Chadwick were able to make a few new correlations. Minoan pottery Minoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quickly maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of