According to legend, oleaia, the daughters of king Minyas of Orchomenus, who had despised the Dionysian rites, were seized with a desire to eat human flesh of one of their children.
During the Middle Helladic period, Amarynthos had developed its trade with mainland Greece and produced magnificent pieces of the Minyean art, while in the Late Helladic period it was one of the main areas of Euboea.
Greek mythographers gave the Minyans an eponymous founder, Minyas, perhaps as legendary as Pelasgus (the founding father of the Pelasgians), which was a broader category of pre-Greek Aegean peoples.