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The Mycenaean Collapse

The Mycenaean culture of ancient Greece,with major centers at Mycenae and Pylos on the Greek mainland and Knossus on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea,was at its height from 1400 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E.with growing cities,thriving trade,and a prosperous economy.Around 1200 B.C.E.,however,the Mycenaean world showed signs of great trouble,and by 1100 B.C.E.it was gone.Its palaces were destroyed,many of its cities were abandoned,and its art,patterns of life,and system of writing were buried and forgotten.

What happened?Some recent scholars,noting evidence that the Aegean island of Thira (modern Santorini)suffered a massive volcanic explosion in the middle to late second millennium B.C.E.,have suggested that this natural disaster was responsible.According to one version of the theory,the explosion occurred around 1400 B.c.., blackening and poisoning the air for many miles around and sending a monstrous tidal wave that destroyed the great palace at Knossus and,with it,Minoan culture.According to another version,the explosion took place about 1200 B.C.E.,destroying the Bronze Age culture throughout the Aegean Sea region.This second version conveniently accounts for the end of both the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations in a single blow,but the evidence does not support it. The Mycenaean towns were not destroyed all at once;many fell around 1200 B.C.E.,but some flourished for another century,and the Athens of the period was never destroyed or abandoned.No theory of natural disaster can account for this pattern,leaving us to seek less dramatic explanations for the end of Mycenaean civilization.

Some scholars have suggested that sea raiders destroyed Pylos and,perhaps,other sites on the mainland.The Greeks themselves believed in a legend that told of the Dorians,a rude people from the north who spoke a Greek dialect different from that of the Mycenaean peoples.According to the legend,the Dorians joined with one of the Greek tribes,the Heraclidae,in an attack on the southern Greek peninsula of Peloponnese,which was repulsed.One hundred years later they returned and gained full control.Recent historians have identified this legend of the return of the Heraclidae with a Dorian invasion.

Archaeology has not provided material evidence of whether there was a single Dorian invasion or a series of them,and it is impossible to say yet with any certainty what happened at the end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean Sea region.The chances are good,however,that Mycenaean civilization ended gradually over the century between 1200 B.C.E.and 1100 B.C.E.Its end may have been the result of internal conflicts among the Mycenaean kings combined with continuous pressure from outsiders,who raided,infiltrated,and eventually dominated Greece and its neighboring islands.There is reason to believe that Mycenaean society suffered internal weaknesses because of its organization around the centralized control of military force and agricultural production.This rigid organization may have deprived it of flexibility and vitality,leaving it vulnerable to outside challengers.

The immediate effects of the Dorian invasion were disastrous for the inhabitants of the Mycenaean world.The palaces and the kings and bureaucrats who managed them were destroyed.The wealth and organization that had supported the artists and merchants were likewise swept away by a barbarous people who did not have the knowledge or social organization to maintain them.Many villages were abandoned and never resettled.Some of their inhabitants probably turned to a nomadic life,and many perished.

Another result of the invasion was the spread of Greek people eastward from the mainland to the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor.The Dorians themselves,after occupying most of the Peloponnese,swept across the Aegean Sea region to occupy the southern islands and the southern part of the Anatolian coast.These migrations made the Aegean Sea a Greek lake.Trade with the old civilizations of the Near East,however,was virtually ended by the fall of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations,nor was there much internal trade among the different parts of Greece.The Greeks were forced to turn inward,and each community was left largely to maintain itself. 

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►The Mycenaean culture of ancient Greece,with major centers at Mycenae and Pylos on the Greek mainland and Knossus on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea,was at its height from 1400 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E.with growing cities,thriving trade,and a prosperous economy.Around 1200 B.C.E.,however,the Mycenaean world showed signs of great trouble,and by 1100 B.C.E.it was gone.Its palaces were destroyed,many of its cities were abandoned,and its art,patterns of life,and system of writing were buried and forgotten.