The Ancient Egyptians and the civilizations of the Middle East at the time had very large sources of water: the Nile and the Tigres/Euphrates respectively. However, the Minoan civilization on Crete had very little sources of fresh water. Now, I understand things have changed since ancient times, but when I look at a map of Crete today, there are almost no sources of fresh water. And one would think that little sources there were would be constantly fought over. I was just wondering how an isolated civilization that existed so long ago got its water.
Looking at a map doesn't tell the entire story. There is only one lake on Crete, Lake Kournas. The island has rivers, but as in most of the Aegean, most of these rivers run dry in summer, except a few (e.g. near Preveli Beach). The island has a Mediterranean climate, with hot and dry summers, but mild and wet winters. It's not as dry as either Northern Africa or Southwest Asia, though the southern coast does technically belong to a different (African) climate zone. Crete is large and self-sufficient; it doesn't struggle with water like e.g. the Cyclades do.
Crete receives ample rain in winter: in fact, it's raining right now in Matala, a beachside town on the soutern coast. The island is very mountainous, and melting snows feed rivers during the spring that carry water to the sea. The highest mountains in Crete (i.e. Psiloritis) were still capped by snow when I drove past there last August, and so the snowmelt is nearly continuous. There are also lots of caves, which usually contain fresh water.
Water can, of course, be collected and stored. The ancient Cretans also used various methods to collect and store water. For example, at Kato Zakros, groundwater was collected using cisterns. You may also be interested in this 2006 paper on Minoan aqueducts, available on ResearchGate. They also dug wells to access water. There are also other sources of fresh water: the village of Spili has a Venetian fountain that is fed with a continuous stream of fresh water from the mountains.
The Classical city of Lato, located high in the mountains, has a large communal cistern in the Agora, and most of the private houses feature smaller basins/cisterns, which would have been filled with rainwater or with water carried from somewhere else. (I wrote about this archaeological site here; features photos). Settlements were, of course, typically founded in places that had ready access to water.
For more on the island and its climate, general handbooks can be useful. The Zakros reference, above, for example, comes from the relevant chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (2010) edited by Eric Cline. There is also a useful discussion of the island and its features in K. Nowicki's Defensible Sites in Crete (2000).