As Early Minoan settlements evolved from family dwellings to villages, and crafts such as metallurgy, stone carving, pottery making and wall-painting came to require technical skills and knowledge beyond the ability of the average agrarian society .
A need for specialized craftsman developed. These individuals devoted their time to making products for everyday village consumption, but at the same time where responsible for keeping up with the technical advances being made in their craft in the East. When the Old Palaces at Knossos, Phaestos and Mallia were established, shortly after 1900 B.C., the finest of the craftsmen where called in to work on the first great public monuments in Crete, and the first true Minoan art appeared. The most important fact the modern viewer must bear in mind is that Minoan Art was created for religious purposes: there are no scenes of everyday life. Even the wonderful wall-paintings, with delicate lifelike renderings of flowers and birds, were probably executed to to give the viewer a feeling of the season during which a particular festival or rite took place. No works are signed are attributed to any individual artist. The only artist's name that survives in later Greek mythology is that of Daedalus, the architect for the palace at Knossos.
