<P> Minoan techniques and ceramic styles had varying degrees of influence on Helladic Greece . Along with Santorini, Minoan settlements are found at Kastri on Cythera, an island near the Greek mainland influenced by the Minoans from the mid-third millennium BC (EMII) to its Mycenaean occupation in the 13th century . Minoan strata replaced a mainland - derived early Bronze Age culture, the earliest Minoan settlement outside Crete . </P> <P> The Cyclades were in the Minoan cultural orbit and, closer to Crete, the islands of Karpathos, Saria and Kasos also contained middle - Bronze Age (MMI - II) Minoan colonies or settlements of Minoan traders . Most were abandoned in LMI, but Karpathos recovered and continued its Minoan culture until the end of the Bronze Age . Other supposed Minoan colonies, such as that hypothesized by Adolf Furtwängler on Aegina, were later dismissed by scholars . However, there was a Minoan colony at Ialysos on Rhodes . </P> <P> Minoan cultural influence indicates an orbit extending through the Cyclades to Egypt and Cyprus . Fifteenth - century BC paintings in Thebes, Egypt depict Minoan - appearing individuals bearing gifts . Inscriptions describing them as coming from keftiu ("islands in the middle of the sea") may refer to gift - bringing merchants or officials from Crete . </P> <P> Some locations on Crete indicate that the Minoans were an "outward - looking" society . The neo-palatial site of Kato Zakros is located within 100 meters of the modern shoreline in a bay . Its large number of workshops and wealth of site materials indicate a possible entrepôt for trade . Such activities are seen in artistic representations of the sea, including the "Flotilla" fresco in room five of the West House at Akrotiri . </P>

Minoan buildings used the following materials in building their palaces