Around 1600 BC a catastrophe happened, the consequence of which was the collapse of one of the most interesting and at the same time the most mysterious cultures of the Mediterranean basin. The eruption of the Santorini volcano, considered one of the most powerful volcanic explosions in human history, was this catastrophe. The civilization in question developed on the islands of the Aegean Sea and probably had its centre in Crete. Crete occupies an important place in Greek mythology, after all, here the ruler was Minos, here the Minotaur lived, and Daedalus worked here. In 1878, a Greek archaeologist discovered the ruins of a palace here, and twenty years later Arthur Evans finally unveiled a huge palace complex. Evans and his team took it a step further, rebuilding parts of the palace and "restoring" the frescoes. Unfortunately, the effect of their actions is a kind of free interpretation rather than a reconstruction. What's more, the ruins in Knossos are the remains of a palace rebuilt by the Achaeans after their conquest of Crete around 1450 BCE. So it is not a structure fully related to the culture that flourished here before the volcano eruption in Santorini.

The eruption of 1600 BC caused the formation of a huge ten-kilometre caldera, which is made up of five islands: Thira, Tirasia, Nea Kameni, Palea Kameni, Aspronisi. As early as the nineteenth century, perhaps under the influence of the discoveries in Pompeii, the first attempts at excavation were made on Thira, but it was not until 1967 that regular work began. During them, many wonderful paintings were discovered, one of which, The Collection of Saffron, became the impetus for an attempt to create a template for a Minoan profile. A template, or more precisely, a step-by-step instruction that would allow you to draw such a profile using three simple tools: a compass, a ruler and a pencil.

The Akrotiri (Thira) painting is the most reliable source of cultural research from the pre-eruption of 1600 BC, if only because the volcanic ash effectively protected the frescoes from interference by subsequent generations of inhabitants, as happened in Knossos. In the case of Knossos, between today's viewer and the original work, there was an artist - restorer, who created new values from the preserved fragments and the Achaeans who rebuilt this complex.