I'd be very interested on seeing anything which suggests that South American or New Zealand glaciers were in retreat during the Minoan Period.
That's an easy one. Take a look at the respective warm periods over the past 10K years and tell me how a warming period of the magnitude of the Minoan could possibly be local, or hemispherical in nature. And again, the minoan signal in the graph below is from the Vostok ice cores. Tell me how you believe such a warming compared to today could not result in retreating glaciers.
There is such a thing as common sense here and looking at a warming of that magnitude and claiming that it wouldn't have resulted in glaciers retreating to a greater extent than today pushes the notion of common sense. Further, didn't I give you an article describing archaeological finds dating back to the minoan warming in peru? The glacier had to be absent for the find to be laid down.
I do think this is a good post (which is why I wanted time to read it more carefully), and I do think you make a good point here about the Minoan Period very likely having a global impact.
But given the Minoan Period is largely associated with sunspot acitivty - why do you feel it is relevant to the situation we face today?
What makes you think that the current warming is not the result of solar activity?