Category Archives: bull leaping

Age and Athletes.

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The Olympics are associated with Classical Greece, where these games officially began.

But there were contests of athletic skill before that. And women participated. At least we know they did in Sparta. (Some of the writings by men in other areas were shocked by the freedom of Sparta’s women.)

Since the murals and frescoes in Knossos seem to display both male and female athletes, I chose to believe the young women in Minoan Crete also engaged in races and other games of skill.

And with the Summer Olympics are going on now, I’ve reflected on the athletes who are competing.

I’ve gotten more than a few questions on the youth of my protagonist. (Martis is 16.) Here’s my question: do you think a forty-year old has the stamina, the speed, and the fearlessness to run at a charging bull?

Even in the 2024 Olympics, the athletes tend to be young. One of the skateboarders is 11. Another competitor is 12. There are quite a few teenagers competing. DHINIDHI DESINGHU, a swimmer from India, is 14 years old.

Hezly Rivera. American gymnast, is 16. After Kamila Valieva, a Russian figure skater, won at fifteen (and then lost the gold because of a doping scandal) the age for competing in figure skating has been raised to 17.

The ‘old’ athletes in their late twenties are referred to as though they have one foot in the grave and the other on a roller skate. Simone Biles, arguably the best modern female gymnast, is the oldest competitor at 27 since the 1950’s. She’s referred to as a ‘veteran’ and ‘experienced.’So, a 16 year-old athlete is not an outlier at all, even now.

Horns of Consecration

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What are the Horns of Consecration? I mention them over and over in my mysteries. (In the shadow of the Bull and On the Horns of Death)

The horns, a symbolic representation of the horns of the sacred bull, were everywhere in Minoan Crete. They ranged in size from smaller ones that edged walkways and stairs to larger ones.

A still intact horns of consecration

As I’ve discussed, one of the features of his culture was the bull leaping which, in my opinion, probably bridged sport and religion.

The bull in bull dancing

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In my Ancient Crete series, I describe a sport in which young people run at a bull, grab the horns, and flip over the back. Martis, my protagonist, wants to become a bull leaper in the first book – In the Shadow of the Bull.

In the second in the series, On the Horns of Death, Martis is a full fledged bull leaper.

Below is my imagined picture of what bull leaping might look like.

The bulls used in this sport/ritual were not the domesticated cattle we are now familiar with. Instead, a type of cattle now extinct called aurochs are thought to be ones used.

The aurochs were holdovers from the Ice Age and were much larger than domesticated bulls. From historical reports and excavated skeletons, we know the auroch bulls stood about six feet. They had long slender legs for walking long distances. For the purpose of bull leaping, they had long, thick curved horns.

What happened to the aurochs? We know they were still in existence during the Roman era; they were used as battle beasts in the arenas. The aurochs actually survived until the 1600s, but the numbers were much diminished. Over hunting and loss of range as humans expanded into their habitat. The date given for their extinction is 1627 when a poacher killed the last one on a reserve in Poland.

An effort to rewild Europe has attempted to bring back the Aurochs, among other extinct animals. DNA strands from some ancient cattle strains were combined. The result is called Heck’s cattle and gradually they have been introduced into Europe. Spain just announced a reintroduction in October, 2023.

Gods and Goddesses of Bronze Age Crete

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From the preponderance of female figures on seals and in frescoes, archaeologists believe Crete worshipped a Supreme Goddess, probably a fertility Goddess from Neolithic times. (Similar to Astarte.)There is some dispute whether the statuary depicting women with snakes in their hands are representations of the Goddess or Priestesses engaged in a ritual.

note the tiered skirt, the short-sleeved jacket and the tight belt around the waist.

Besides the Supreme Goddess, there was a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Poseidon, the God of the Oceans and Earthquakes, is one. (He was adopted by the mainland Greeks with almost no change.) Dionysus is another God, a very old one. A vegetation God, he is the God of wine as well as the Master of Animals. Unlike the Gods and Goddess of Classical Greece, Dionysus is not immortal. He is born each spring, grows to manhood throughout the year, and dies in winter.

One particularly interesting feature of Dionysus is his birth, in a cave and nourished by nanny goats. Sound familiar? The Cretan Zeus, a relative latecomer to the pantheon, is ascribed the same birth story. In Classical times, the same tale is told of Zeus’ birth, (although with a myth about the Titans surrounding it.) Zeus, of course, was elevated to the major God for the Classical Greeks.

The Goddesses are more complicated. Were they individuals or aspects of the Supreme Goddesses? Maybe a mix of the two? Aphrodite is connected to the Bronze Age and her name is pre-Greek. Artemis was a virgin, and the hunt was sacred to her, just as the Classical Greeks believed. Hera was another important Goddess. Shrines to her have been found in Crete. She was responsible for childbirth, a task she shared with Artemis. In the Classical Greek pantheon, she was reduced from being an important Goddess in her own right to Zeus’s jealous wife.

Britomartis meaning Sweet Virgin or Sweet Maiden, was worshipped by the fishermen. Her other name is Diktynna for the nets the fishermen used. I took her name and used the second half, Martis as the name of the protagonist in In the Shadow of the Bull and the sequels.

What about the Minotaur? Was the bull-headed man a God?We know that bulls were very very important in Ancient Crete. The statuary and frescos of bull leapers and the many representations of bulls is proof of that. But, was the Minotaur sacred? I choose to believe that the Minotaur was a creation of the Mainland Greeks, representing something they did not understand – rituals involving masked priests.

As excavations and study of this amazing culture continues, I’m sure we discover more about their religion.

Why is Martis so young?

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One of the questions I’ve been asked consistently is why Martis is so young. Martis is a fifteen year old-aspiring bull leaper, When her sister dies at the altar on her wedding day, and Martis is told by her sister’s spirit that she was murdered, Martis takes on the responsibility of investigating.

Isn’t a fifteen year old too young? We would certainly think so. But the average lifespan then, and through most of human history, was only about forty.

This is a somewhat misleading statistic since the average lifespan was brought down by maternal death during childbirth. Illness and accidents, and of course war injuries, account for significant mortality. Still, a few of the bodies disinterred from graves, even from this time, indicate some people survived to their sixties or even their seventies. But that was not common.

All of life’s milestones were earlier. Women married in their teens and were grandmothers in their thirties. Many of the seasoned warriors described in the Iliad were barely in their twenties.

The other factor is that any bull leaper would have to be young: fast, agile and strong. Even now, with all the benefits modern health has to offer, sports figures in their forties are a rarity. I make a point of emphasizing that most of the bull leapers age out of the sport by their late teens. At fifteen, Martis is already facing the end of her career as a bull-dancer.