The history of mazes: from the myth of the Minotaur to today's games

Published on 22 September 2026

The maze is one of the oldest and most fascinating symbols in human history. Before becoming the paper game children solve today with a pencil, the maze was a myth, a real piece of architecture, and a spiritual symbol found across cultures worldwide. Knowing its history makes the game even more interesting, both for those introducing it in class and for anyone simply solving it for fun.

The myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth of Crete

The most famous story tied to mazes comes from ancient Greece. According to the myth, King Minos of Crete had the architect Daedalus build a labyrinth so intricate that no one could ever find their way out. Inside it he imprisoned the Minotaur, a creature half man and half bull, born from an affair involving the king's wife and a bull sent by Poseidon. Every year, seven young men and seven young women from Athens were sacrificed to the monster, until the hero Theseus decided to face it. With the help of Ariadne, Minos's daughter, who gave him a ball of thread to unwind along the path, Theseus managed to enter the labyrinth, kill the Minotaur, and find his way back out by following the thread in reverse.

This myth has endured for centuries and remains one of the best-known stories in Greek mythology, often the very first way children discover what a maze even is.

The real palace of Knossos

Archaeologists have discovered that a real place may lie behind the myth: the palace of Knossos, in Crete, unearthed in the early twentieth century by the archaeologist Arthur Evans. The palace, built around 2000 BC, had over 1,300 rooms connected by such a complex web of corridors that anyone visiting for the first time must genuinely have felt lost in a maze. Many scholars believe the legend of the Minotaur's labyrinth grew directly out of the memory of this extraordinary, bewildering structure.

From myth to spiritual symbol

Over the centuries, the maze took on meanings quite different from its original one. In the Middle Ages, many European cathedrals had labyrinths built into their floors, not to confuse those who walked them, but as a path for meditation: following the pattern with your feet, one step at a time, symbolically represented a spiritual journey toward a centre, often linked to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for those who could never actually make the trip. Unlike the labyrinth of Crete, these cathedral labyrinths had only one path with no branching choices: the point was not to find the right way, but to walk it slowly and mindfully.

Garden mazes and hedges

Starting in the Renaissance, the fashion for hedge mazes spread through the gardens of grand European estates. Walking between tall green walls, searching for the way through dead ends and false leads, became an elegant pastime for European courts. Some of these gardens still exist today and can be visited, offering an experience remarkably close to the one imagined thousands of years earlier in the myth of Crete, but lived with one's own feet rather than on paper.

The maze becomes a game for everyone

The paper maze, the kind found today in puzzle books and on sites like CreaPuzzle, is a much more recent evolution. Simple to print, inexpensive, and adaptable to any theme, it made accessible to anyone an experience that once required an entire garden or building. The underlying principle, though, remains exactly the same as it was thousands of years ago: a starting point, a goal, and a path to discover among right choices and dead ends.

Why knowing this history enriches the game

Telling children that the maze they are solving descends from a myth as old as Greek civilisation itself, or that kings once built entire structures for the very same purpose, turns a simple logic exercise into a small journey through history. It's a natural way to connect the game to subjects like mythology, art history, and even archaeology, enriching an activity that at first glance looks like nothing more than a pastime.

Mazes in other cultures around the world

The maze isn't an exclusively Greek invention: similar patterns appear in rock carvings in India, in ancient Scandinavian tombs, and even in some Native American traditions, where the labyrinth motif shows up in woven baskets and sacred symbols passed down through generations. This widespread appearance, across cultures with no contact with one another, suggests that the idea of an intricate path leading to a centre speaks to something deeply human and universal, regardless of where or when it was drawn.

From Ariadne's thread to a figure of speech

Ariadne's gesture, giving Theseus the thread to find his way back, is so deeply rooted in Western culture that the expression "Ariadne's thread" is still used today to describe any method or clue that helps someone navigate a complicated situation, well beyond the context of actual mazes. Sharing this origin with older children connects the game not only to mythology but to the history of language itself, showing how an ancient myth can leave traces still alive in how we speak today.