 |
| Timeline |
 |
 |
 |
Historical Dictionary |
|
Narratives : Pre-Classical Greece http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sat/texts/narrpreclas.html |
|
History, by definition, is tied to written documentation. In Greece (more precisely, on
Crete), the oldest written sources are from
c. 1750 B.C., written in Linear A, a script still not convincingly decoded.
Another script, identified with the Phaistos Disc,
hieroglyphic in structure, from c.1700-1550 B.C., equally has not yet been convincingly decoded. A third script,
Linear B, sets in
c.1400; the youngest sources in Linear B date from c.1150 B.C. This script, used on Crete as well as in mainland Greece,
has been decoded by Michael Ventris in 1952. However, the Linear B sources are somewhat dull and stereotypical, bookkeeping
records of palacial administration, containing numerous placenames we can not locate on the map. Our knowledge of Pre-Classical Greek history is based on other sources, on the results of archaeological excavations and on Greek legends, the latter written down in the 8th century B.C. or later, and believed, as oral literature, to be transmitted from generation to generation, thus including some historical information. Archaeological findings require interpretation to become useful historical information. The interpretation of ancient legends equally requires sensitivity on the side of the person doing so; easily, one can deceive oneself and arrive at speculative Interpretations. One may only collect the wide range of interpretations of the legend of Atlantis to realize the danger of misinterpretation. Students should be aware, that numerous speculations have been published by amateur historians and amateur archaeologists. The Linear A script is associated with the Minoan Civilization on Crete. Crete seems to have been a unified state, engaged in overseas trade, with a fleet controlling the seas, hence a thalassocracy. The fact that the Cretan palaces, like Knossos, are located in the plains, in contrast to the acropolis-type location of Mycenae and Troy, made historians come to that conclusion. The palace of Knossos has the appearance of a maze. Murals on the walls of the palace of Knossos feature men and women bare-breasted; bulls are frequently featured in these murals, as are young men attempting to somersault over the back of a bull. These facts led archaeologist Arthur Evans to christen the Cretan civilization which built Knossos "Minoan Civilization". The Cretan thalassocracy seems to have been broke by a natural disaster, the massive detonation of the volcano crater, the remnants of which form the modern island of Santorin (or Thera), located straight north of Crete. That detonation is dated as having occurred between 1650 and 1450 B.C.; a Tsunami created by this event provides for a reasonable explanation of the legend of Atlantis, seemingly a Cretan port drowned and erased by a massibe tidal wave. On mainland Greece, and after the Minoan Civilization, a civilization centered on acropoleis (Hilltop fortresses) emerged, named after the city of Agamemnon "Mycenaean Civilization". Mycenae saw most construction activity between 1550 and 1250 B.C. This civilization seems to have been rather warlike; for a defensible acropolis a hill with steep slopes and with at least one well, which even during the hottest summer did not fall dry, was essential. The description of the Greeks waging war against Troy in the Iliad seems to fit very well with the archaeological evidence. It is believed, that Mycenaean Greeks conquered Crete about 1420/1380 B.C., conquered Troy about 1250/1184 B.C. In case of both the palaces of Crete and the acropoleis of the Mycenaean civilization, they seem to have had a multiple function - combined palace and city in case of Knossos, hilltop fortress and city in case of Mycenae. Even the terminology we use has to be reflected. About the time of the fall of Troy, or shortly after, written documentation in Greece and Crete ceases; similarly, the quality of buildings and artefacts is poor, if compared to earlier periods. The period between the end of written documentation in c.1150 until the reoccurrence of writing - now in the Greek alphabet - in the 8th century B.C., is referred to as the Greek Dark Ages. Egyptian records of c.1200 B.C. report of invasions of the so-called Sea Peoples, which Egyptian forces fought off. At about that time, the Old Testament reports the arrival of the Philistines, warlike immigrants coming from across the sea. The once powerful Hittite Empire, around 1200 B.C., disappeared from the records. Historians have assumed, that the Mycenaean warrior elite left Greece for other conquests further east, that this Mycenaean warrior elite is identical with the Sea Peoples, a branch of which are believed to be the Philistines. As the best artists and most of the men capable of writing are believed to have joined that enterprise, this would explain the decline in the quality of archaeological findings, on Crete and in mainland Greece. The student of history has to keep in mind that, although these explanations seem to be rather plausible, they are, and because of poor documentation, contested dating and ambivalent sources, are, and must be, speculative in nature. The student must use his own discretion when reading accounts of this period of history. |
| click here for an older WHKMLA narrative on the history of Pre-Classical Greece |
|
EXTERNAL FILES |
| REFERENCE |
Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200-479 B.C., London : Routledge 1996, KMLA Lib.Sign. 938 O81g |
|
This page is part of World History at KMLA First posted on May 18th 2006 Click here to go Home Click here to go to Information about KMLA, WHKMLA, the author and webmaster Click here to go to Statistics |
