Why was shipbuilding so important to the Minoans? The Minoans had surplus amounts of timber to ship to other places.
The Minoans relied on ships for defense, communication, and trade.
The Minoans depended entirely on fishing for their livelihood.
The Minoans built only small ships to move around the island.

The three steps before modern english were indo-european, germanic, and old english. as peoples moved around the eurasian continent, their languages changed. throughout the ages, the languages became more specialized. as english has many germanic influences, it is easy to see how this was one of the forebears. also, old english was one of the main ancestors of the modern language, spoken in the 5th through about the 13th centuries.