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The first well-known literate civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans. The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BCE to the 15th century BCE.[13] It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Will Durant referred to it as "the first link in the European chain".[14] The Minoans were replaced by the Mycenaean civilization which flourished during the period roughly between 1600 BCE, when Helladic culture in mainland Greece was transformed under influences from Minoan Crete, and 1100 BCE. The major Mycenaean cities were Mycenae and Tiryns in Argolis, Pylos in Messenia, Athens in Attica, Thebes and Orchomenus in Boeotia, and Iolkos in Thessaly. In Crete, the Mycenaeans occupied Knossos. Mycenaean settlement sites also appeared in Epirus,[15][16] Macedonia,[17][18] on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Asia Minor, the Levant,[19] Cyprus[20] and Italy.[21][22] Mycenaean artefacts have been found well outside the limits of the Mycenean world. Quite unlike the Minoans, whose society benefited from trade, the Mycenaeans advanced through conquest. Mycenaean civilization was dominated by a warrior aristocracy. Around 1400 BCE, the Mycenaeans extended their control to Crete, centre of the Minoan civilization, and adopted a form of the Minoan script (called Linear A) to write their early form of Greek in Linear B. The Mycenaean civilization perished with the collapse of Bronze-Age civilization in the eastern shored of the Mediterranean Sea. The collapse is commonly attributed to the Dorian invasion, although other theories describing natural disasters and climate change have been advanced as well. Whatever the causes, the Mycenaean civilization had definitely disappeared after LH III C, when the sites of Mycenae and Tirynth were again destroyed and lost their importance. This end, during the last years of the 12th century BCE, occurs after a slow decline of the Mycenaean civilization, which lasted many years before dying out. The beginning of the 11th century BCE opened a new context, that of the protogeometric, the beginning of the geometric period, the Greek Dark Ages of traditional historiography. |
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