History - The Rough Guide to Greece - page 758

Greek now became the language of administration at Knossos and the other former
Minoan palaces, as well as on the mainland - indeed this is the earliest moment that
Greek language can definitely be identified, as the palace records on Crete are from
now on written in a script known as Linear B , which when deciphered in 1953 was
shown to be a form of Greek. Having wrested control of the Aegean trade from the
Minoans, the Mycenaeans were dominant for another three hundred years. At the end
of that period, in about 1220 BC, they famously laid siege to, and destroyed, yet
another rival, the city of Troy .
Yet within a generation the Mycenaean world was overwhelmed by a vast migration
of northerners from somewhere beyond the Black Sea. Probably victims of a
catastrophic change in climate that brought drought and famine to their homelands,
these Sea Peoples , as the ancients called them, swept down through Asia Minor and
the Middle East and also crossed the Mediterranean to Libya and Egypt, disrupting
trade routes and destroying empires as they went. With the palace-based Bronze Age
economies destroyed, the humbler village-based economies that replaced them lacked
the wealth and the technological means to make a mark in the world. Greece was
plunged into a Dark Age, and knowledge of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations
slipped into dim memory.

The Dark Age and the rise of the city-state: 1150-491 BC
The poverty and isolation that characterized Greece for the next five hundred years did
have one lasting effect, emigration . Greeks spread to the Dodecanese islands, to Cilicia
along the south coast of Asia Minor , and to Cyprus , which now became Greek-speaking.
Later, around 1000 BC, they also settled in large numbers along the western coast of
Asia Minor. Even in the Dark Age there were a few glimmers of light: Athens , for
example, escaped the destruction that accompanied the fall of Mycenaean civilization
and maintained trading links abroad. It became the route through which the Iron Age
was introduced to mainland Greece with the importation of iron weapons, implements
and technological know-how around 1100 BC. A new cultural beginning was also
made in the form of pottery painted in the Geometric style , a highly intricate and
controlled design that would lie at the heart of later Greek architecture, sculpture and
painting. But it was the Phoenicians , sailing from Sidon and Tyre in present-day
Lebanon, who really re-established trading links between the Middle East and the
Aegean world in the eighth century BC, and Greeks followed swiftly in their wake.
With wealth flowing in again, Greek civilization developed with remarkable rapidity;
no other people achieved so much over the next few centuries. The institution most
responsible for this extraordinary achievement, the city-state or polis , came into being
at a time of rapidly growing populations, greater competition for land and resources,
increasing productivity and wealth, expanding trade and more complex relationships
with neighbouring states. The birthplace of democracy and of equality before the law,
the city-state became the Greek ideal, and by the early seventh century BC it had
spread throughout Greece and wherever Greeks established colonies overseas.
Trade also acted as a cultural stimulus; contact with other peoples made the Greeks
aware of what they shared among themselves, and led to the development of a national
sentiment , notably expressed and fostered by the panhellenic sanctuaries that arose

900-700 BC c.800 BC 776 BC 750-650 BC

Geometric Period. Revival of trade between

Greece and the Middle
East kick-starts an
economic revival.

The first Olympic Games
staged at Olympia.

Greeks colonize the
Eastern Mediterranean,
from Italy to Asia Minor.