After the Stone Age comes the Bronze Age, if you name human history after the material from which we make our most important and fashionable tools. (Right now we’re in the age of petroleum products.) Before you get the swanky city-states of Greek legend and history, on Crete there’s the great flourishing of the Minoan civilization, about six centuries earlier; they had bronze, which is made by alloying copper and tin, both of which they must have obtained through trade. (Brass, FYI, is copper & zinc.) Although it’s a bit tarnished now (nothing compared to lots of bronze swords at the museum that have rusted and fallen apart), this statue of a guy leaping over a bull, in what was apparently a popular sport/ritual among the Minoan, is one of the coolest and most dramatic objects in the museum. It’s in their Minoan Room, which as you can see in my photo is mostly a lot of pots and amphoras. The Minoans had lots of stuff about bulls--MacGregor recites the great old legend of Minos, Pasiphäe, Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur in his podcast--and he speaks on the phone to a present-day bull-leaper from Spain, a rotador. Unlike a matador/picador, who tries to kill the bull, this kind of ritual will only injure the clumsy human who dares make the attempt.
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