Early History of the Ancient Greeks: Bronze Age Sites, Indo-Europeans and Dark Ages | Early European History And Religion

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EARLY HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS

Toy horse from
the 10th century BC
Greek tribes came from northern Greece and conquered and absorbed the Mycenaeans around 1100 B.C. and gradually spread to the Greek islands and Asia Minor. Ancient Greece developed around 1200-1000 B.C. out of the remnants of Mycenae. After a period of decline during the Dorian Greek invasions (1200-1000 B.C.), Greece and the Aegean Sea area developed a unique civilization.

The early Greeks drew upon Mycenae traditions, Mesopotamian learning (weights and measures, lunar-solar calendar, astronomy, musical scales), the Phoenician alphabet (modified for Greek), and Egyptian art. They established city-states and planted the seeds for a rich intellectual life.

Websites on Ancient Greece: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org; British Museum ancientgreece.co.uk; Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Hampden–Sydney College hsc.edu/drjclassics ; The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization pbs.org/empires/thegreeks ; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web; Ancient Greek Sites on the Web from Medea showgate.com/medea ; Greek History Course from Reed web.archive.org; Classics FAQ MIT classics.mit.edu;

Origin of the Greeks

Proto Greek area

No one is sure exactly how the Greeks evolved. Most likely they were a Stone-Age people that began voyaging to Crete, Cyprus, the Aegean islands and the Greek mainland from southern Turkey around 3000 B.C. and mixed with the Stone Age cultures in these lands.

Around a 2500 B.C., during the early Bronze Age, an Indo-European people, speaking a prototypical Greek language, emerged from the north and began mixing with the mainland cultures who eventually adopted their language. These people were divided into fledgling city states from which the Mycenaeans evolved. These Indo European people are believed to have been relatives of the Aryans, who invaded India and Asia Minor. The Hittites, and later the Greeks, Romans, Celts and nearly all Europeans and North Americans descended from Indo-European people.

Greek speakers appeared in the Greek mainland about 1900 B.C. They eventually consolidated themselves into petty chiefdoms that grew into Mycenae. Some time later the mainland "Greeks" began mixing with the Bronze Age people of Asia Minor and island "Greeks" (Ionians) of which the Minoans were the most advanced.

The first Greek are sometimes referred to as the Hellenes, the tribal name of an early mainland Greek people who were initially mostly nomadic animal herders but over time established settled communities and interacted with the cultures around them..

Early European Farmers — in Greece

According to Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz: In June 2016, an international research team led by paleogeneticists of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) published a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that early farmers from across Europe have an almost unbroken trail of ancestry leading back to the Aegean. The scientists analyzed the DNA of early farmer skeletons from Greece and Turkey. According to the study, the Neolithic settlers from northern Greece and the Marmara Sea region of western Turkey reached central Europe via a Balkan route and the Iberian Peninsula via a Mediterranean route. These colonists brought sedentary life, agriculture, and domestic animals and plants to Europe. During their expansion they will have met hunter-gatherers who lived in Europe since the Ice Age, but the two groups mixed initially only to a very limited extent. "They exchanged cultural heritage and knowledge, but rarely spouses," commented anthropologist Joachim Burger, who lead the research. "Only after centuries did the number of partnerships increase." [Source: Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz, June 6, 2016 =|=]

“The study used genomic analysis to clarify a long-standing debate about the origins of the first European farmers by showing that the ancestry of Central and Southwestern Europeans can be traced directly back to Greece and northwestern Anatolia. "There are still details to flesh out, and no doubt there will be surprises around the corner, but when it comes to the big picture on how farming spread into Europe, this debate is over," said Mark Thomas of University College London (UCL), co-author on the study. "Thanks to ancient DNA, our understanding of the Neolithic revolution has fundamentally changed over the last seven years." =|=

“Sedentary life, farming, and animal husbandry were already present 10,000 years ago in the so-called Fertile Crescent, a region covering modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Zuzana Hofmanová and Susanne Kreutzer, the lead authors of the study, concluded: "Whether the first farmers came ultimately from this area is not yet established, but certainly we have seen with our study that these people, together with their revolutionary Neolithic culture, colonized Europe through northern Aegean over a short period of time." =|=

Indo-Europeans

Around a 3000 B.C., during the early Bronze Age, Indo-European people began migrating into Europe, Iran and India and mixed with local people who eventually adopted their language. In Greece, these people were divided into fledgling city states from which the Mycenaeans and later the Greeks evolved. These Indo European people are believed to have been relatives of the Aryans, who migrated or invaded India and Asia Minor. The Hittites, and later the Greeks, Romans, Celts and nearly all Europeans and North Americans descended from Indo-European people.

Indo-Europeans is the general name for the people speaking Indo-European languages. They are the linguistic descendants of the people of the Yamnaya culture (c.3600-2300 B.C. in Ukraine and southern Russia who settled in the area from Western Europe to India in various migrations in the third, second, and early first millenniums B.C.. They are the ancestors of Persians, pre-Homeric Greeks, Teutons and Celts. [Source: Livius.com]

Indo-European intrusions into Iran and Asia Minor (Anatolia, Turkey) began about 3000 B.C.. The Indo-European tribes originated in the great central Eurasian Plains and spread into the Danube River valley possibly as early as 4500 B.C., where they may have been the destroyers of the Vinca Culture. Iranian tribes entered the plateau which now bears their name in the middle around 2500 B.C. and reached the Zagros Mountains which border Mesopotamia to the east by about 2250 B.C...

Indo-European migrations

Charioteers and Indo-European Invaders

Between 2000 and 1000 B.C. successive waves of Indo-Europeans migrated to India from Central Asia (as well as eastern Europe, western Russia and Persia) . The Indo-Europeans invaded India between 1500 and 1200 B.C., around the same time they moved into the Mediterranean and western Europe. At this time the Indus civilization had already been destroyed or was moribund.

The Indo-Europeas had advanced bronze weapons, later iron weapons and horse drawn chariots with light spoked wheels. The native people the conquered at best had oxcarts and often only stone-age weapons."Charioteers were the first great aggressors in human history," the historian Jack Keegan wrote. About 1700 BC, Semitic tribes known as the Hykos, invaded the Nile Valley, and mountain people infiltrated Mesopotamia. Both invaders had chariots. Around 1500 BC, Aryan charioteers from the steppes of northern Iran conquered India and the founders of the Shang Dynasty (the first Chinese ruling authority) arrived in China on chariots and set up the world's first state. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

On the earliest evidence of chariots, John Noble Wilford wrote in the New York Times, “In ancient graves on the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan, archeologists have uncovered skulls and bones of sacrificed horses and, perhaps most significantly, traces of spoked wheels. These appear to be the wheels of chariots, the earliest direct evidence for the existence of the two-wheeled high-performance vehicles that transformed the technology of transport and warfare.[Source: John Noble Wilford, New York Times, February 22, 1994]

“The discovery sheds new light on the contributions to world history by the vigorous pastoral people who lived in the broad northern grasslands, dismissed as barbarians by their southern neighbors. From these burial customs, archeologists surmise that this culture bore a remarkable resemblance to the people who a few hundred years later called themselves Aryans and would spread their power, religion and language, with everlasting consequence, into the region of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India. The discovery could also lead to some revision in the history of the wheel, the quintessential invention, and shake the confidence of scholars in their assumption that the chariot, like so many other cultural and mechanical innovations, had its origin among the more advanced urban societies of the ancient Middle East.

Chariots and Indo-European Language

Greek chariot

“Among the charioteers of the steppes, the pattern was much the same,” Wilford wrote in the New York Times. Aryan-speaking charioteers, sweeping in from the north in about 1500 B.C., probably dealt the death-blow to the ancient Indus Valley civilization. But a few centuries later, by the time the Aryans compiled the Rig Veda, their collection of hymns and religious texts, the chariot had been transformed to a vehicle of ancient gods and heroes. [Source: John Noble Wilford, New York Times, February 22, 1994]

“Chariot technology, Dr. Muhly noted, seems to have left an imprint on Indo-European languages and could help solve the enduring puzzle of where they originated. All of the technical terms connected with wheels, spokes, chariots and horses are represented in the early Indo-European vocabulary, the common root of nearly all modern European languages as well as those of Iran and India.

In which case, Dr. Muhly said, chariotry may well have developed before the original Indo-European speakers scattered. And if chariotry came first in the steppes east of the Urals, that could be the long-sought homeland of Indo-European languages. Indeed, fast spoke-wheeled vehicles could have been used to begin the spread of their language not only to India but to Europe.

One reason Dr. Anthony has his "gut feeling" about the steppe origin of the chariot is that in this same period of widening mobility, harness cheekpieces like those from the Sintashta-Petrovka graves show up in archeological digs as far away as southeast Europe, possibly before 2000 B.C. The chariots of the steppes were getting around, possibly before anything like them in the Middle East.

Bronze Age Site in Greece

In 2001, a team led by Greek archaeologist Dr. Dora Katsonopoulou that was excavating the Homeric-era town of Helike in the northern Peloponnesus, found a well-preserved 4500-year-old urban center, one of the few very old Bronze Age sites discovered in Greece. Among the the things they found were stone foundations, cobbled streets, gold and silver clothing ornaments, intact clay jars, cooking pots, tankards and kraters, wide bowls for mixing wine and water, and other pottery — all of a distinctive style — and tall, graceful cylindrical “depas” cups like those found in the same age strata in Troy.

The Bronze Age ruins were found on the Gulf of Corinth among orchards and vineyards 40 kilometers east of the modern port city of Patras. Ceramics enabled archaeologists to date the site to between 2600 and 2300 B.C. Dr. Katsonopoulou told the New York Times, “It was clear from the beginning that we had made a significant discovery.” The site was undisturbed, she said, which “offers the great and rare opportunity to us to study and reconstruct everyday life and economy of one of the most important periods of the Early Bronze Age.”

Dr. John E. Coleman, an archaeologist and professor of classics at Cornell who had visited the site several times, told the New York Times, “It’s not just a little farmstead. It has the look of a settlement that may be planned, with buildings aligned to a system of streets, which is pretty rare for that period. And the depas cup is very important because it suggests international contacts.” Dr. Helmut Bruckner, a geologist at the University of Marburg in Germany said the location of the town suggests it was a coastal town and “at the time had a strategic importance” in shipping. Geologic evidence indicates it was destroyed and partly submerged by a powerful earthquake.

Early Cycladic Culture (3200-2300 B.C.)

Cycladic pottery from around 4000 BC

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “The Cyclades, a group of islands in the southwestern Aegean, comprises some thirty small islands and numerous islets. The ancient Greeks called them kyklades, imagining them as a circle (kyklos) around the sacred island of Delos, the site of the holiest sanctuary to Apollo. Many of the Cycladic Islands are particularly rich in mineral resources—iron ores, copper, lead ores, gold, silver, emery, obsidian, and marble, the marble of Paros and Naxos among the finest in the world. Archaeological evidence points to sporadic Neolithic settlements on Antiparos, Melos, Mykonos, Naxos, and other Cycladic Islands at least as early as the sixth millennium B.C. These earliest settlers probably cultivated barley and wheat, and most likely fished the Aegean for tunny and other fish. They were also accomplished sculptors in stone, as attested by significant finds of marble figurines on Saliagos (near Paros and Antiparos). [Source: Department of Greek and Roman Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2004, metmuseum.org \^/]

“In the third millennium B.C., a distinctive civilization, commonly called the Early Cycladic culture (ca. 3200–2300 B.C.), emerged with important settlement sites on Keros and at Halandriani on Syros. At this time in the Early Bronze Age, metallurgy developed at a fast pace in the Mediterranean. It was especially fortuitous for the Early Cycladic culture that their islands were rich in iron ores and copper, and that they offered a favorable route across the Aegean. Inhabitants turned to fishing, shipbuilding, and exporting of their mineral resources, as trade flourished between the Cyclades, Minoan Crete, Helladic Greece, and the coast of Asia Minor. \^/

“Early Cycladic culture can be divided into two main phases, the Grotta-Pelos (Early Cycladic I) culture (ca. 3200?–2700 B.C.), and the Keros-Syros (Early Cycladic II) culture (ca. 2700–2400/2300 B.C.). These names correspond to significant burial sites. Unfortunately, few settlements from the Early Cycladic period have been found, and much of the evidence for the culture comes from assemblages of objects, mostly marble vessels and figurines, that the islanders buried with their dead. Varying qualities and quantities of grave goods point to disparities in wealth, suggesting that some form of social ranking was emerging in the Cyclades at this time.” \^/

“The majority of Cycladic marble vessels and sculptures were produced during the Grotta-Pelos and Keros-Syros periods. Early Cycladic sculpture comprises predominantly female figures that range from simple modification of the stone to developed representations of the human form, some with natural proportions and some more idealized. Many of these figures, especially those of the Spedos type, display a remarkable consistency in form and proportion that suggests they were planned with a compass. Scientific analysis has shown that the surface of the marble was painted with mineral-based pigments—azurite for blue and iron ores, or cinnabar for red. The vessels from this period—bowls, vases, kandelas (collared vases), and bottles—display bold, simple forms that reinforce the Early Cycladic predilection for a harmony of parts and conscious preservation of proportion. \^/

Greek Dark Ages (1100 to 750 B.C.)

The Greek Dark Ages, which began after the collapse of Mycenae, around 1150 B.C., is believed to have resulted after an invasion by another people from the north — the Dorians, who spoke Greek but otherwise were barbarians. A few Mycenaeans held their own in fortresses around Athens and later reorganized on the islands and shores of Asia Minor (the Ionian migrations). Little is known about Greece during this period, which is sometimes referred to the Greek Dark Ages. City-states broke up into small chiefdoms. Populations crashed. Fine art, monumental architecture and writing practically died out. Greeks migrated to the Aegean islands and Asia Minor.

Artwork from the Dark Ages consisted primarily of pottery with simple, repetitive geometric patterns. Literature was stored like the Iliad. The dead were sometimes cremated and buried under 160-foot-long structures.

During the Greek Dark Ages, Greek migrants established city-states on Asia Minor. Around 800 B.C., the region began to recover and poetry, amphorae and stylized sculptured figures with intricate geometric patterns emerged.

John Porter of the University of Saskatchewan wrote: “With the fall of the Mycenaean palaces, Greece entered into the period of decline known as the Dark Ages. Greek myth recalls the turbulent nature of these times in its stories of the woes of the Greek heroes on their return from Troy, but the principal cause of the differences between Bronze Age Greece and the Greece of Homer's day, according to tradition, was the so-called Dorian Invasion. [Source:John Porter, “Archaic Age and the Rise of the Polis”, University of Saskatchewan. Last modified November 2009 *]

“Although the Mycenaeans had established a network of roads, few existed in this period, for reasons we will get to in a moment. Most travel and trade was conducted by sea. Even under the Roman empire, with its sophisticated network of excellent roads, it was less expensive to ship a load of goods from one end of the Mediterranean to the other than to cart it 75 miles inland. Thus these early communities initially developed in relative isolation from one another. This geographical isolation came to be reinforced by the competitive nature of Greek society. *\

Europe in the Late Neolithic Period

“It was the Greek outposts in Asia Minor and the islands that witnessed the beginnings of what was to become classical Greek civilization. These areas were relatively peaceful and settled; more important, they had direct contact with the wealthy, more sophisticated cultures of the east. Inspired by these cross-cultural contacts, the Greek settlements of Asia Minor and the islands saw the birth of Greek art, architecture, religious and mythological traditions, law, philosophy, and poetry, all of which received direct inspiration from the Near East and Egypt.” *\

Thucydides: “On The Early History of the Hellenees”

Thucydides wrote in “On The Early History of the Hellenes (c. 395 B.C.): “The country which is now called Hellas was not regularly settled in ancient times. The people were migratory, and readily left their homes whenever they were overpowered by numbers. There was no commerce, and they could not safely hold intercourse with one another either by land or sea. The several tribes cultivated their own soil just enough to obtain a maintenance from it. But they had no accumulation of wealth, and did not plant the ground; for, being without walls, they were never sure that an invaded might not come and despoil them. Living in this manner and knowing that they could anywhere obtain a bare subsistence, they were always ready to migrate; so that they had neither great cities nor any considerable resources. The richest districts were most constantly changing their inhabitants; for example, the countries which are now called Thessaly and Boeotia, the greater part of the Peloponnesus with the exception of Arcadia, and all the best parts of Hellas. For the productiveness of the land increased the power of individuals; this in turn was a source of quarrels by which communities were ruined, while at the same time they were more exposed to attacks from without. Certainly Attica, of which the soil was poor and thin, enjoyed a long freedom from civil strife, and therefore retained its original inhabitants [the Pelasgians]. [Source: Thucydides, “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” translated by Benjamin Jowett, New York, Duttons, 1884, pp. 11-23, Sections 1.2-17, Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece, Fordham University]

“The feebleness of antiquity is further proved to me by the circumstance that there appears to have been no common action in Hellas before the Trojan War. And I am inclined to think that the very name was not as yet given to the whole country, and in fact did not exist at all before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion; the different tribes, of which the Pelasgian was the most widely spread, gave their own names to different districts. But when Hellen and his sons became powerful in Phthiotis, their aid was invoked by other cities, and those who associated with them gradually began to be called Hellenes, though a long time elapsed before the name was prevalent over the whole country. Of this, Homer affords the best evidence; for he, although he lived long after the Trojan War, nowhere uses this name collectively, but confines it to the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes; when speaking of the entire host, he calls them Danäans, or Argives, or Achaeans.

“And the first person known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself master of what is now called the Aegean sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use. For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and islands, as communication by sea became more common, were tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men; the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy. They would fall upon the unwalled and straggling towns, or rather villages, which they plundered, and maintained themselves by the plunder of them; for, as yet, such an occupation was held to be honoralbe and not disgraceful. . . .The land, too, was infested by robbers; and there are parts of Hellas in which the old practices continue, as for example among the Ozolian Locrians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, and the adjacent regions of the continent. The fashion of wearing arms among these continental tribes is a relic of their old predatory habits.

“For in ancient times all Hellenes carried weapons because their homes were undefended and intercourse was unsafe; like the barbarians they went armed in their everyday life. . . The Athenians were the first who laid aside arms and adopted an easier and more luxurious way of life. Quite recently the old-fashioned refinement of dress still lingered among the elder men of their richer class, who wore undergarments of linen, and bound back their hair in a knot with golden clasps in the form of grasshoppers; and the same customs long survived among the elders of Ionia, having been derived from their Athenian ancestors. On the other hand, the simple dress which is now common was first worn at Sparta; and there, more than anywhere else, the life of the rich was assimilated to that of the people.

“With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defense against a neighbor. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites. But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.”

Archaic Age of Greece (750 B.C. to 500 B.C.)

Beginning in the mid 8th century B.C. there was blossoming of art and culture that coincided with the large-scale movement of people to urban centers called city states. Populations increased, trade flourished and independent cities emerged. As people were able to make a living by trading and selling crafts, a fledgling middle class emerged.

Some say that ancient Greek history began with the first Olympiad in 776 B.C. and the writing of Homer's epic between 750 to 700 B.C.

Many important Archaic Age city states were in Asia Minor and the Greek islands. Samos was the home of a powerful navy and powerful dictator named Polokrates, who oversaw the construction of a 3,400-foot-long water-carrying tunnel through a mountain, a engineering feat associated more with Rome than Greece.

By the 7th century B.C., when Greece was a major maritime culture and the Aegean Sea was primarily a Greek lake, some Greek city states had become large and powerful. Later, when Asia Minor was occupied by the Romans most of the people along the Aegean continued to speak Greek.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024