The Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1100 BC–750 BC) refers to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BC to the rise of the first Greek city-states in the 9th century BC and the epics of Homer and earliest writings in alphabetic Greek in the 8th century BC. Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and the Aegean. ... Cycladic civilization (also known as Cycladic culture or The Cycladic period) is an Early Bronze Age culture of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, spanning the period from approximately 3000 BC-2000 BC. // Cycladic marble figurine of the Keros Culture type The significant Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Cycladic... The Minoans were a civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea. ... Mycenaean Greece, the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, is the historical setting of the epics of Homer and much other Greek mythology. ... The Temple to Athena, the Parthenon Ancient Greece is a period in Greek history that lasted for around three thousand years. ... The Temple to Athena, the Parthenon Ancient Greece is a period in Greek history that lasted for around three thousand years. ... The Hellenistic period of Greek history was the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 BC. Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture, which... Roman Greece is the period of Greek history following the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC until the reestablishment of the city of Byzantium and the naming of the city by Emperor Constantine I as the capital of the Roman Empire (as Nova... Roman Greece The Greek peninsula became a Roman protectorate in 146 BC, and the Aegean islands were added to this territory in 133. ... Byzantine Empire at its greatest extent c. ... Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th century until its declaration of independence in 1821. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Combatants Greek revolutionaries United Kingdom Kingdom of France Russian Empire Ottoman Empire Egyptian Khedivate Commanders Theodoros Kolokotronis Alexander Ypsilanti Georgios Karaiskakis Omer Vryonis Mahmud Dramali Pasha ReÅŸid Mehmed Pasha Ibrahim Pasha. ... Capital Athens Language(s) Greek Religion Greek Orthodox Government Constitutional Monarchy King  - 1832-1862 Otto  - 1863-1913 George I  - 1913-1917 Constantine I  - 1917-1920 Alexander  - 1920-1922 Constantine I  - 1922-1924 George II Historical era Enlightenment Era  - London Protocol August 30, 1832  - Military junta April 21, 1967 The Kingdom... German soldiers raising the Swastika over the Acropolis. ... Combatants Hellenic Army, Royalist forces, Republicans, British troops Communist guerillas (ELAS, DSE) Commanders Alexander Papagos, Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, James Van Fleet Markos Vafiadis Strength 150,000 men 50,000 men and women Casualties 15,000 killed 32,000+ killed or captured The Greek Civil War (Greek: ) was fought between 1946 and... The Phoenix rising from its flames and the silhouette of the soldier bearing a rifle with fixed bayonet was the emblem of the Junta. ... The history of the Hellenic Republic constitutes three discreet periods in Greek History: 1827 - 1832, 1924 - 1935 and 1974 - present. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... The military history of Greece includes the history of battles fought in the peninsula of Greece, Cyprus, formerly Greek-speaking areas such as Asia Minor (Anatolia), and, the military history of the Greek people regarless of geography. ... In the modern history of Greece, starting from the Greek War of Independence, the Constitution of 1975/1986/2001 is the last in a series of democratically adopted Constitutions (with the exception of the Constitutions of 1968 and 1973 imposed by a dictatorship). ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... (Redirected from 1100 BC) Centuries: 13th century BC - 12th century BC - 11th century BC Decades: 1150s BC 1140s BC 1130s BC 1120s BC 1110s BC - 1100s BC - 1090s BC 1080s BC 1070s BC 1060s BC 1050s BC Events and Trends 1100 BC - Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria conquers the Hittites... Centuries: 9th century BC - 8th century BC - 7th century BC Decades: 800s BC 790s BC 780s BC 770s BC 760s BC - 750s BC - 740s BC 730s BC 720s BC 710s BC 700s BC Events and Trends 756 BC - Founding of Cyzicus. ... The History of Greece extends back to the arrival of the Greeks in Europe some time before 1500 BC, even though there has only been an independent state called Greece since 1821. ... 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Archaeology shows a collapse of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean world during this period. The great palaces and cities of the Myceneans were destroyed or abandoned. The Hittite civilisation collapsed. Cities from Troy to Gaza were destroyed. The Greek language largely ceased to be written. Greek Dark Age pottery has simple geometric designs and lacks the figurative decoration of Mycenean ware. The Greeks of the Dark Age lived in fewer and smaller settlements, suggesting famine and depopulation, and foreign goods have not been found at archaeological sites, suggesting minimal international trade. Contact was also lost between foreign powers during this period, yielding little cultural progress or growth of any sort. Relief of Suppiluliuma II, last known king of the Hittite Empire The Hittites were an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa (Hittite URU) in north-central Anatolia from the 18th century BC. In the 14th century BC, the Hittite empire was... Troy or Ilion, see Troy (disambiguation) and Ilion (disambiguation). ... Articles with similar titles include the Spanish name Garza. ... Greek ( IPA: or IPA: — Hellenic) is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest of any single language in that language family. ...

One theory holds that the Mycenaean civilization was undermined by an ecological catastrophe. The hill top fortress, forest fauna hunting, horse-based society depicted in Homer and Hesiod was supplanted by a trading culture connected more closely to the sea. The ecological deterioration was the loss of forests through human exploitation, making the prior economic structure unsustainable. Plato mentions something of this in his theory about goats denuding the hills of flora, causing erosion which led to loss of forestation. One commentator, Massey, speculates that this sense of there having been a golden age long ago is connected with this disaster and has continued as a cultural meme in societies and cultures with roots in Classical Greece. On this reading, the collapse which resulted in the Greek Dark Ages is not due primarily to a Dorian invasion, but rather to environmental damage in the first, or a contributing, instance. Homer (Greek: , ) was an early Greek poet and aoidos (rhapsode) traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now identified by some as possibly Hesiod Hesiod (Hesiodos, ) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC. Hesiod and Homer, with whom Hesiod is often paired, have been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived...

Kings ruled throughout this period until eventually they were replaced with an aristocracy, then still later, in some areas, an aristocracy within an aristocracy — an elite of the elite. Warfare shifted from a focus on cavalry to a great emphasis on infantry. Due to its cheapness of production and local availability, iron replaced bronze as the metal of choice in the manufacturing of tools and weapons. Equality grew slowly among the different classes of people, leading to the dethronement of the various kings and the rise of the family.

Families began to reconstruct their past in attempts to link their bloodlines with heroes from the Trojan War, more specifically Heracles. While most of this was legend, some were sorted by poets of the school of Hesiod. Most of these poems are lost, though, but some famous "storywriters", as they were called, were Hecataeus of Miletus and Acusilaus of Argos. The fall of Troy, by Johann Georg Trautmann (1713–1769). ... Hercules, a Roman bronze (Louvre Museum) For other uses, see Heracles (disambiguation). ... Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now identified by some as possibly Hesiod Hesiod (Hesiodos, ) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC. Hesiod and Homer, with whom Hesiod is often paired, have been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived... Hecataeus (c. ... The lower half of the benches and the remnants of the scene building of the theater of Miletus (August 2005) Miletus (Hittite: Milawata or Millawanda, Greek: Μίλητος transliterated Miletos, Turkish: Milet) was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia (in what is now the Aydin Province of Turkey... Acusilaus or Akousilaos of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a Greek logographer and mythographer who flourished around 500 BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points. ... Coordinates 37°37′ N 22°43′ E Country Greece Periphery Peloponnese Prefecture Argolis Province Argos Population 29,505 Area 5. ...

It is thought that the epics by Homer contain a certain amount of tradition preserved orally during the Dark Ages period. The historical validity of Homer's writings is vigorously disputed; see the article on Troy for a discussion. Homer (Greek: , ) was an early Greek poet and aoidos (rhapsode) traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ... Troy or Ilion, see Troy (disambiguation) and Ilion (disambiguation). ...

At the end of this period of stagnation, the Greek civilization experienced a renaissance that spread the Greek world as far as the Black Sea and Spain. NASA satellite image of the Black Sea Map of the Black Sea The Black Sea is an inland sea between southeastern Europe and Anatolia that is actually a distant arm of the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mediterranean Sea. ...

The rise of a new writing system

The use of the syllabary system of the Minoans, the so-called Linear scripts, fell into sharp decline in favour of a new alphabet system, adopted from the Semitic Phoenicians to write not only the Greek language, but also other languages in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time. Before this turbulent time, Myceneans were writing their Greek language in Linear B but after the Dark Ages when history was being recorded once again, we find this new alphabet, the more familiar alpha-beta-gamma. The Etruscans also benefited from the innovation, Old Italic variants spreading throughout Italy from the 8th century. Other variants of the alphabet appear on the Lemnos Stele and in the various alphabets of Asia Minor. The previous Linear scripts were not completely abandoned however, the Cypriot syllabary, descended from Linear A, remained in use on Cyprus for Greek and Eteocypriot inscriptions until the rise of Hellenism. A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... Phoenicia was an ancient civilization in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plain of what is now Lebanon and Syria. ... This article is about the ancient syllabary. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Lemnian language is the language of a 6th century BC inscription found on a funerary stela on the island of Lemnos (termed the Lemnos stele, discovered in 1885 near Kaminia). ... Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian dialects and the Phrygian language. ... The Cypriot syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from ca. ... Linear A incised on tablets found in Akrotiri, Santorini. ... Eteocypriot was a language spoken in Iron Age Cyprus. ... The Hellenistic period of Greek history was the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 BC. Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture, which...

Mediterranean warfare and the Sea Peoples

It is around this time that large-scale revolts took place and attempts to overthrow existing kingdoms by surrounding people who were already plagued with famine, hardships but most likely as a result of economic and political instability occurring in whole of the Mediterranean. The Hittite kingdom was invaded and fell, by the hand of the so-called Sea Peoples, a group of peoples originating from surrounding areas around the Mediterranean, such as the Black Sea, the Aegean and Anatolian regions. A similar assemblage of peoples may have attempted to take over Egypt twice, once during the reign of Merneptah about 1224 BC, and then again during the reign of Ramesses III about 1186 BC. War monuments were set up for each conflict,the 13th and 12th c inscriptions and carvings at Karnak and Luxor are the only sources for Sea Peoples, first coined by the Egyptians themselves(Sandars 1978). Relief of Suppiluliuma II, last known king of the Hittite Empire The Hittites were an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa (Hittite URU) in north-central Anatolia from the 18th century BC. In the 14th century BC, the Hittite empire was... The Sea Peoples is the term used for a mysterious confederacy of seafaring raiders who around 1200 BC sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially during Year 8 of Ramesses III of the... Merneptah (occasionally: Merenptah) was pharaoh of Ancient Egypt (1213 – 1203 BC), the fourth ruler of the 19th Dynasty. ... Usermaatre Meryamun Powerful one of Maat and Ra, Beloved of Amun Nomen Ramesse Hekaiunu Ra bore him, Ruler of Heliopolis Died 1151 BC Burial KV11 Major Monuments Medinet Habu Ramesses III (also written Ramses and Rameses) was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty and is considered to be... The Sea Peoples is the term used for a mysterious confederacy of seafaring raiders who around 1200 BC sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially during Year 8 of Ramesses III of the...

"The foreign countries...made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were on the move, scattered in war. No country could stand before their arms...Their league was Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh" [Edgerton and Wilson 1936, pl 46, p.53; and Wilson, J. 'Egyptian Historical Texts' in Pritchard 1969.] Map showing the location of Philistine land and cities of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ashkelon Map of the southern Levant, c. ... The Tjekker were one of the Sea Peoples who raided Egypt and the Levant during the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. They raided Egypt repeatedly before settling in northern Canaan. ... Sea Peoples is the term used in ancient Egyptian records of a race of ship-faring raiders who drifted into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and attempted to enter Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, and especially year 5 of Rameses III of the 20th Dynasty. ... Denyen or Danuna Based on New Kingdom Egyptian text, The Danuna are considered one of the major groups of the Sea Peoples. ... ...

In both attempts, however, the Egyptian defenses were successful in avoiding the same fate as the Hittites. The oral tradition of the Greeks allowed much of the history and heritage to be passed down from one generation to another.

References

• Latacz, J. Between Troy and Homer. The so-called Dark Ages in Greece, in: Storia, Poesia e Pensiero nel Mondo antico. Studi in Onore di M. Gigante, Rome, 1994.

• Jan Sammer, New Light on the Dark Age of Greece [1] (Immanuel Velikovsky Archive)

• Snodgrass, Anthony M. (c2000). The dark age of Greece : an archaeological survey of the eleventh to the eighth centuries BC. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93635-7 (hb) ISBN 0-415-93636-5 (pb). 

• Sandars, N.K. (c1978). The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the ancient Mediterranean 1250-1150 BC. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-02085-X.