Lissa Wallace, age 8, of Charlotte, North Carolina, for her question:

What was the Minoan civilization?

This is a story of a past civilization that rose to great glory and then faded away. It happened on the Island of Crete, sunning itself there in the Mediterranean Sea, just below the tip of Greece. Nowadays the island has but three major cities and less than half a million people. But centuries before Christ, when the legendary King Minos is believed to have ruled the Minoan people, there are believed to have been 100 splendid cities and a population of at least a million. There were fine houses and many historians believe there were busy harbors where ships came and went to trade with other lands across the sea. Under the king's magnificent palace were said to be endless tunnels stuffed with goods and stores.

The Minoan people wore handsome clothes and jewelry. Their craftsmen worked metals; their artists adorned the walls of buildings with murals. There were arenas where people gathered to watch sports events. Their favorite was a sort of bull fight  ¬where nobody harmed the bull. Instead, highly trained men and women athletes wrestled with him. Perhaps they liked to prove that people can master even a sturdy bull with just their bare hands.