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The Dorian invasion is one of the theories advanced to explain the decline of the Mycenaean civilization in ancient Greece. Other theories considered (or viewed as a combination of factors) include: failing trade, civil war, and natural disaster.
The Dorians were one of the Hellenic tribes of ancient Greece. They seem to have originally lived in the north, north-eastern regions of Greece, yet later circumstances drove them south into Attica and the Peloponnesos, certain Aegean islands, and the coast of Asia Minor.
This Dorian invasion (beginning from ca 1150 bc) seems to have disrupted the Bronze Age Mycenean civilization, and many Mycenean cities were toppled in the Peloponessus and elsewhere. The Peloponessian cities the Dorians invaded include Corinth, Olympia, Sparta and Mycenae. Many archaeologists attribute the destruction of Mycenae, a pivotal Mycenean city, to these invading Dorians.
Though most of the Doric invaders settled in the Peloponesse, they also settled on Rhodes and in Asia Minor, where in later times the Dorian Hexapolis (the six Dorian cities) would arise: Halicarnassus, Cos, Cnidos (Asia Minor); Lindos, Camiros, and Ialyssos (in Rhodes). These six cities would later become rivals with the Ionian cities of Asia Minor. The Dorians also invaded Crete.
The Dorians are best known for their invasion of mainland Greece which, along with the civil war at the end of the Mycenean, led to the Greek Dark Ages.
As the Dorians settled many areas of the Aegean, their way of rulership, was generally to merge with the indigenous people of their land, as seen with the invasion of Corinth, Rhodes, and Argos.
Dorian artistic elements proved to be integral to the artistic traditions of ancient Greece.
With the Dorianinvasion between 1100 and 950 BC, which is referred to as "the return of the sons of Heracles" in mythology, ended the bronze age and the dark ages of Hellas.
The Dorians, together with the north-western Greeks settled down mostly in the areas at the Corinthian gulf and in the northwest of the Peloponesse.
Furthermore the Dorians moved to the south and east of the Peloponesse, in the area of Megara at the Sardonic gulf, on the island Aegina in that same gulf, on the southern islands of the Aegean sea (Crete, Rhodes, and Kos), and in the southwest corner of Asia Minor.
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