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In Britain there’s only room for one at the top of any specialty, and Evans was at the top of his; the first batch of written tablets he excavated he had laid down on the hillside in the Sun, it rained in the night, and (as Wunderlich put it) “no more tablets”. After that fiasco Evans jealously guarded his archive, publishing very little, and (despite not being able to read the texts) fought to his dying day against the idea that Greek was hidden in Linear B. The B texts were much more numerous, and (as is still thought today) he thought the A texts would yield after the B writing were figured out.

As noted in “Lost Languages”, Evans even found what appeared to be a clear-as-day Greek word in Linear B (and as it turned out, he was correct), wrote about it, and rejected it as just a coincidence, the kind that is a peril to serious scholars. Wow.

But anyway, Evans’ better-known myth was the “thallosocracy”, the Minoan naval supremacy that turned the Aegean and the environs of Crete, and possibly points east (where Minoan stuff has been found under Mycenaean strata) into an empire not unlike Evans’ own Victorian Britain. Another weird coincidence.

That the Minoans had access to boats shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has noticed that they lived on an island. :’)

There really was zero evidence for his thallosocracy; the Minoans were somehow involved in seagoing trade, and since they weren’t confined to Crete, chances are good they were a maritime people (pretty much what Herodotus says). That they were peaceful was wishful thinking, but at least Evans could point to what he (and most people) consider Minoan palaces and note that there are no fortifications around them. There are ancient roadways and bridgets leading to them, but no fortifications.

Neither has there been much effort to look for any. :’)