This lecture reports on the latest archaeological investigations on Crete that explore the human presence on the island prior to the advent of farming in the Neolithic.  The discoveries at Plakias and Asphendou cave have dramatically changed our understanding of early seafaring and hominin dispersal in the Mediterranean.  Crete has been an island for ca. five million years, and was a refugium for bizarre creatures such as pygmy deer and dwarf elephants.  We now know that our hominin ancestors also reached Crete.  The talk presents recently discovered stone tools dating to the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, as well as a re-evaluation of enigmatic stone carvings that we now understand as the earliest figural art yet found in Greece.  These discoveries have placed the Aegean archipelago into the larger contexts of the ‘Out-of-Africa’ migration and the milieu of Palaeolithic art.