Ariadne's Tribe harks back to the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete: its beautiful towns, its sprawling temple complexes, its sacred caves and mountaintops. We know about the ancient Minoans - the way they lived, worked, and worshiped - because of a century's worth of efforts by archaeologists to uncover the remains of this fascinating ancient culture.

But sometimes these irreplaceable traces of ancient civilization are endangered by the modern desire for profit. A luxury holiday resort development that was turned down by the Greek government in 2011 has now received approval and will soon begin construction in Cavo Sidero, the beautiful wild peninsula on the northeastern coast of Crete. I understand the reasoning: The Greek economy is still in dire straits and anything that will bring in tourist income looks like a saving grace.

The problem, though, is that in addition to damaging a fragile Mediterranean ecosystem, including 'forests' of the native Cretan date palm that was sacred to the Minoans and that's rare and even endangered in some places now, this short-term boon will cause the permanent destruction of archaeological remains. This is stuff we can't get back once it's gone, information we'll never have about an ancient society that informs not just a particular Pagan path but also the entire history of the Mediterranean region.

Just look at how many already identified ancient Minoan sites there are in northeastern Crete:

 

Minoan Peak Sanctuaries and Hilltop Shrines

 

 

Minoan Palaces, Villas and Peak Sanctuaries

 

And these are just the ones we already know about. Because this area has been largely uninhabited since Byzantine times, "Neolithic and Minoan farms, terraces and fields and check-dams of Ancient Greek and Byzantine cultivators survive on a landscape-wide scale, not hidden or destroyed by the works of later cultivators. Here, as nowhere else except on a few remote islets, one can see what the farmed countryside of Mediterranean Antiquity looked like" (from the original petition that aimed at stopping this development).

Crete is not alone in the struggle between ancient history and modern profit. This kind of situation happens all over the world all the time, and it's not limited to eras of economic difficulty. It's not unusual for developers to dig up artifacts, throw them away, and keep on building without notifying anyone because 'time is money and those damned archaeologists just want to shut me down.'

But time is the one thing we don't have. Once ancient remains are gone, they're gone. It's our own history, and that of our ancestors, that we're obliterating. Your family didn't come from Crete, you say? The further back in time you go, the fewer people there are, until we're all related, one way or another. It's all our history. Humanity's history.

I pray that in time, we'll learn to change our priorities and value the knowledge of our precious past over a few dollars in the present. Then, finally, our ancestors might be proud of us.