Scientists have debated for years why Bronze Age wall paintings found at the ancient settlement of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini depict monkeys of a species that lived thousands of miles away in Asia.
It has been suggested that, indeed, during the Bronze Age there could have been contacts between cultures separated by great distances, who exchanged ideas and techniques, despite the barriers and difficulties.
Akrotiri was a settlement of the Minoan civilization on the island of Santorini (Thera) during the Bronze Age, which was buried by ash from a volcanic eruption that occurred around 1100 BC. Many of the paintings on the walls of the buildings that remained buried, dating from 3500–1100 B.C. they clearly show monkeys, but there is no archaeological evidence of monkeys in Greece at the time.
Most of the monkeys depicted have been identified as Egyptian species, such as olive baboons, which makes sense because Egypt is known to have had contact with the Minoan civilization, which spread across several islands in the Aegean Sea.
However, a new study involving researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Zoological Society of London reveals that other primates depicted on the walls are monkeys gray langurs (Semnopithecus), which live in southern Asia in what is now Nepal, Bhutan, and India, and particularly in the Indus Valley.
Who made the paintings, had you ever seen a gray langur? Perhaps the Minoans reached the Indus? I wouldn't be surprised if some day in the future we find evidence of that kind of direct contact , says Marie Nicole Pareja of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and lead author of the study, though it's also possible the visit was the other way around, but again there's no evidence , she adds, that is, that people from the Indus would have brought the monkeys to the Greek island.
Most likely, the Aegean and the Indus were connected through Mesopotamia. Langurs may have been imported to Mesopotamia where Minoan traders saw them and later bred on the walls of Akrotiri.
It is proof of this long-range trade, of these relationships with these remote areas says Couple. Even in the Bronze Age, there seems to have been a great deal of exchange between these seemingly disparate and entirely separate civilizations.