PolledHistory: 22-29 Sep: Mycenae

 Hello!

After seven days of polling and eight results, we've found a winner, with 50% of all the votes voting it: in the category of mysterious civilizations, the Mycenaeans have won.

Mycenae has been briefly introduced last time in our Bronze Age collapse episode, but it has further depth. It is situated in Greece and was the last major Bronze Age kingdom in Ancient Greece, and was the first truly Greek civilization.

The Bronze Age period in Greece is dubbed the Helladic period. ("Hellas" in Greek means Greece.). The period is split into three parts: the Early, Middle, and Late Helladic period. The Late Helladic period timeline coincide with Mycenaean Greece. 

Mycenae's foundings are mysterious. One theory says Indo-Europeans, from the Eurasian steppe migrated into Greece, becoming the Mycenaeans. The Eurasian Steppe, for your information, is in modern day Ukrraine, Southern Russia, Kazakhstan, extending all the way to Mongolia. However, during the Bronze Age the relationship between the Aegean Sea (the sea in Greece) civilizations and Eurasian steppe civilizations was weak. 

Modt theories correlate Mycenaeans with the Indo-Europeans and Siberians. But whatever how it was formed, Mycenae as a civilziation was founded circa 1750 BC. The civilization of Minoan Crete greatly affected Mycenaean culture. 

The Myceneans made settlements and centers of powers such as megaron buildings and other complex structures. Mycenae was also know for the walls and defensive structures they built. They made luxorious burials and the dead bodies would wear gold masks on their heads. Mycenaean craftsmanship, inspired by Minoan (an earlier civilization) craftmanship, was one of the Mycenaeans' popular traits and possessions, and the Mycenaeans traded their unique pieces of pottery throughout the Bronze Age world.

By the Koine Era, between 1400 and 1200 BC. This part was where Mycenae befan to expand and grow in power outside of mainland Greece to Asia Minor and the Aegean islands. 

By around 1400 BC, something interesting happened. Hittite (an empire in Central Anatolia at the time) records mention the activities of a Mycenaean warlord related to a mythical character. The activities were attacks on Hittite vassals in western Anatolia. Scholars think this could the the historical basis of the likely mythical Trojan War, written by Homer, about the Mycenaean attack on Troy.

Suddenly, a pattern of destruction began by 1250 BC - about the time of the overall Bronze Age Collapse. Many Mycenaean cities were burned and abandoned . The Mycenaeans responded by creating new defences, some of which are quite impressive. For a while, Mycenae and its culture was revived until about sixty years after another wave of destruction came. The great palaces and cities were destroyed by earthquakes and fires. By around 1050 BC, Mycenae fell.

The first hypothesis of why Mycenae was destroyed is a Dorian invasion. The Dorians were a people that were the ancestors of the Spartans. Acoording to the hypothesis, they flooded down from the north, devastating Mycenaean territory.

The other hypothesis talks about the famous Sea Peoples we talked about in our Bronze Age collapse post.  Following the collapse of Mycenae is three hundred years of dark age in Greece, until the era of Archaic Greece, the more well known "Ancient Greece".

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