Scattered Candles in the Night – Civilization during the Greek Dark Age (c. 1100-750 BC)

for most of the three centuries between 1500 to 1200 BC Meenan civilization encompassed and dominated much of the greek-speaking world it was known for its Monumental palaces and fortified citadels armored Warriors that were some of the most formidable in the ancient world and the extensive trade networks that they controlled throughout the Mediterranean its kings were feared respected and and treated as equals by the other great powers of the day including the Hittites and the Egyptians of the New Kingdom era but by the late 13th century BC Myan Society began to unravel and by 1150 BC its political and economic systems that once dominated much of Greece and the aan had collapsed the reasons for this are still debated amongst historians but what is clear is that the Greek speaking World soon entered a period of Decline and fragmentation construction at the great palacial centers had completely stopped with most of them also being abandoned or occupied by squatters no Monumental art where stone structures were commissioned and trade between the Greek mainland and the rest of the world became extremely limited by 1050 BC most of the things that had once made Meenan civilization great had all but disappeared from the pipines ATA fota and the islands of the aan sea while there were a few areas where aspects of meinian civilization still survived such places were the exception rather than the norm Scholars estimate that the overall population of Greece may have drastically been reduced to just a third of what it had once been between the years 1400 to 1200 BC that said it was not all doom and gloom the darkness of the roughly 3 and a half centuries between 1100 to 750 BC is more due to our lack of knowledge of what was going on during this time than anything else historians called the period of Greek history between 1100 and 750 BC a Dark Age due to the relative obscurity in the archaeological record and lack of written documents in comparison to those of the late Bronze Age as well as the later archaic and classical periods but what really happened during this time and was it as ominous as the name implies let's find [Music] out like us today the Greeks of later eras didn't have any concrete knowledge about the period that we call the Dark Age however there does seem to have been some vague historical memories of these pivotal years mentioned in the works of later Greek poets writers and historians for example many make the case that several passages from Homer's great epic The Odyssey which takes place during the aftermath of the Trojan War are filled with references to the late Dark Age The Odyssey often describes the years following the great conflict as being characterized by chaos turmoil and a general breakdown of the traditional social order about 3 to four centuries after the Odyssey was written down the noted historian thiddies Also may have referenced the dark age when he wrote even after the Trojan War helis was still engaged in removing and settling and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth the late return of the Helens from ilam caused many revolutions and factions ensued almost everywhere years later the dorians and the heraclides became masters of the pipines so that much had to be done and many years had to elapse before helis could attain to a durable Tranquility undisturbed by removals and could begin to send out colonies as Athens did to Ionia and most of the islands and the pelian to most of Italy and Sicily and some places in the rest of helas all these places were founded subsequently to the war with Troy today we know that the Greeks living in the centuries following the Bronze Age knew very little about their Myan ancestors and what they thought they knew has yet to be verified by modern archaeology for example they believed that the dorians a greek-speaking group from somewhere to the North had invaded Central and Southern Greece following the collapse of Meenan civilization however so far there's little material evidence of such an invasion and many scholars today outright reject this narrative what the archaeological record does seem to indicate is that many of the villages towns and whatever cities had once existed across the Greek speaking world were mostly abandoned which could have been due to several factors one group of Scholars believes that the violence contributing to the destruction and fall of the Meenan palacial system had also destroyed many of the Region's Farms as well as killed great numbers of the people who worked on them thus in the decades that followed there wasn't enough labor available to produce the surplus food needed to increase or at least sustain the population to what it had been during the late Bronze Age though perhaps not the main cause migration to other areas of the world also played a part in the depopulation of the Greek mainland in the 11th and 10th centuries BC the greatest number of migrants seem to have crossed the aan to the shores of Western Anatolia in modern turkey the most famous of these movements is known as the ionian migration which most Scholars estimate occurred around 1050 BC most of these migrants came from the region of Atta where Athens is located 5 centuries later the ionian Greeks in Anatolia still shared the same dialect tribal names and many of the same festivals as the Athenians there were also settlements of Greeks speaking the aolian and Dorian dialects in Western Asia minor as well other groups of greek-speaking peoples went to Cyprus Canaan and parts of the Levant but after a few Generations their links with the mainland and the preservation of their Greek identity weren't as strong as those who had settled on the coast of Western Anatolia whether through War migration disease or some other reason by the 10th Century BC roughly 2third of the population that once inhabited the Greek mainland land had disappeared due to this Decline and the apparent lack of any real material progress many if not most Scholars of helenic studies often painted a picture of Dark Age Greece that had regressed to become a primitive insignificant Backwater at the corner of Southeastern Europe however archaeological excavations during the latter part of the 20th century up until our own day show that this was not necessarily the case sure the great Meenan citadels and economies centered around them were long gone but life for most people didn't change as much as Scholars had once believed Farmers Craftsmen metal workers Weavers Carpenters potters and other Specialists still practice their professions much as they had during the Meenan age though with a lower level of output and much less sophisticated Goods the Greeks also preserved many aspects of their religion with many of the deities from Myan times still being worshiped by the masses there were also many positive changes and innovations that occurred during the Dark Age in Greece with one of the most important being the adoption of iron for making weapons and tools though developed centuries earlier in the near East objects made of iron really appeared in significant quantities on the Greek mainland in the late 12th and 11th centuries BC the Meenan seemingly had no love for iron since it didn't shine like bronze and was rather clunky in comparison however with the heavy decline in international trade during the Greek Dark Age obtaining copper and especially tin had become much more difficult and for many simply unaffordable in contrast there were adequate local sources of iron or that could be mined from from the hills and mountains of the pipines Atta and Eva and so due to its availability relatively low cost and also out of necessity by 950 BC iron became the most widely used metal in Greece as trade with the Eastern Mediterranean began to pick up so too did Greek ship building and sailing the Seas however it was still Far Cry from the volume and traffic of Meenan times partially because many sailors and Merchants no longer had the support or patronage of the large palacial centers though we don't have the specific details of how they operated without a state sponsor it's possible that those with some means such as local Chieftain provided at least some sort of financial backing to Sailors and Merchants in exchange for a share of the profits or other forms of compensation the presence of local Elites is attested not just by the discovery of graves that belong to distinguished individuals but also buildings that while not on the same scale as Pas Meenan palaces could only have been the residences of high status members of society based on their limited findings archaeologists believe that the several known settlements that were active during the Dark Age contained no more than a few dozen people the exceptions being Athens Argos Corinth thieves and kosis on cre in each of these places the population is estimated to have amounted to just a few thousand many of those who inherited the political authority of their various chiefdoms adopted the title vasilos which in Meenan Linear B tablets appeared to have been one who served the king or wanx as a sort of mayor or headman of the outlying towns and Villages that surrounded a palatial Center or Citadel in later periods of Greek history this title would come to mean king or Lord in the Greek Dark Age such men ruled over villages with a dozen or two families but there seemed to have been exceptions where at least some of them had significant resources and Manpower at their disposal with two such examples being in nioria in the southwestern pipines and leandi on the island of IA during the late Bronze Age nioria had been part of the kingdom of pyos but was abandoned around 1200 BC when that entity came to a devastating end however it was reoccupied just over a century later with an estimated population of perhaps a couple hundred residents while other parts of the Greek mainland may have been in Decline nioria seems to have been booming due to the abundance of good Farmland that surrounded it and other Wide Open Spaces where cattle could graze by 950 BC the town may have had 40 to 50 families living on its Ridge overlooking the plane it's here that a large 10th Century building which archaeologists call the Village chieftain's house with a sizable mearon and porch was discovered at its front was a large Courtyard which may have functioned as a religious Center or a communal Storehouse archaeologists aren't sure what its true purpose may have been but given its size they believed that whoever lived there was a person of very high status on the other side of Greece is the village of leandi on the large island of IA here in 1981 archaeologists uncovered the largest Dark Age structure to date like nioria leandi was also a prosperous Dark Age town that had its roots dating back to at least the Myan age the building uncovered there dates to around 950 BC and measures 150 by 30 ft with two burial shafts sunk into the building's Central room in one of the shafts were two pairs of horses something reminiscent of elite burials of noted Warriors from the late Bronze Age the other shaft contained the cremated remains of a man whose ashes had been placed in a bronze aora that had been made in Cyprus and was of an artistic style dating to at least a century before even more mysterious were the remains of a woman next to the aora who's believed to have been his wife her remains had been adorned almost completely with gold along with an elaborate necklace that appears to have come from the near East and based on its stylistic attributes was already about 700 years old at the time of her burial beside her head was an ivory handled dagger that some believe may have been the instrument of her death if she like the horses had been offered as a sacrifice to be buried with her husband along with the aora and the body of the woman were iron weapons including a sword and a spearhead after the burial the building was demolished and covered by a mound of Earth and large stones that would have involved a number of people to move them a cemetery was also built around the mound and many of these Graves ended up having relatively luxurious objects of their own such as jewelry and bronze vessels that were imported from various parts of the Eastern Mediterranean world and Beyond the identity of the man isn't known but scholars believe he was a wealthy Warrior and probably the chieftain of the Town who may have had some contacts with the east or may have gone on some Expedition there himself within his village though he seems to have been venerated both in life and death as some sort of hero around the same time as the mysterious man from leandi was laid to rest a new style of pottery and art began to appear on the the Greek mainland during the first couple centuries of the Dark Age potters and Painters were rather conservative with their creations and didn't innovate very much but by 900 BC different geometric designs were painted on the pottery this marks the sub period of the Dark Age that archaeologists conveniently call the geometric period the geometric period is divided up into three three art historical phases specifically the early geometric period from 900 to 700 BC the middle geometric period from 850 to 750 BC and finally the late geometric period from 750 to 700 BC at first incorporating circular spiral and zigzag designs Greek pottery and other art gradually began to incorporate common everyday motifs and representations of animals and people by 750 BC such pieces had become extremely popular and came in all sorts of shapes and sizes at around the same time new luxury items such as gold jewelry and more ornate bronze vessels were being developed locally indicating that raw materials from abroad were once again finding their way to markets in Greece the rise in the Region's Prosperity can also be determined by the fact that at many settlements the general quality of the construction of houses greatly improved perhaps the most important and longest lasting change during the latter Dark Age was the adoption of a new alphabet though the art of writing had been lost in the Greek speaking World during the early Dark Ages revitalized trade and contacts with Canaanite and phenician Merchants in the 9th century BC may have recreated the need for many Greeks to write things down as they no longer had a writing system of their own they adopted The Phoenician alphabet but modified it by adding characters for vowels which were not present in The 22l Phoenician version the result was a new Greek alphabet and writing system and by the mid 8th Century BC it had spread to all parts of the Greek World which allowed Greek speakers to communicate with each other over long distances and write down everything from simple Pros to epic poetry by the early 8th Century BC their common language shared epic literature Pantheon of deities and similar festivals increased a sense of panhellenism where the people of various parts of Greece felt in Affinity or kinship with other greek-speaking peoples through their shared Heritage perhaps nothing else was more responsible for creating this early sense of panhellenism than the two great epics attributed to Homer The Iliad and the Odyssey these two great works played a pivotal role in helping to forge a shared Greek identity and to Foster cultural cohesion they also became the main source of knowledge that the Greeks had of their glorious past or at least so they thought we have to remember that The Iliad and odyssey are not historical texts but epic poems filled with myths that said most Scholars today believe that the events described within them notably those related to the great conflict known as the Trojan War do contain some elements of Truth for the Greeks of the late Dark Age they provided them with at least some cultural knowledge and a historical memory of their ancestors along with codes of conduct they were expected to abide by without a doubt the widespread use of the Greek alphabet by this time also helped in spreading Homer's words to all corners of the greek-speaking world the early 8th Century BC was also when Many panh helenic religious shrines and sanctuaries popped up with festivals that reinforced the idea that Greeks everywhere belonged to the same religious and cultural Traditions worshippers who came to such participated in common rituals and sacrifices to honor the gods as well as to listen to The Epic stories of old the most famous of these gatherings was held at the sanctuary of Zeus and Hera at Olympia where in 776 BC the first Olympic Games were held the athletic competitions and celebrations which were held every four years initially included Sports such as running and wrestling but later contests such as horse and Chariot racing were also added as we learn more about the Greek Dark Age it becomes apparent that it was not as bad as many had originally thought if anything it was a formative period of Greek history that allowed the basic foundations of what we today recognize as Greek civilization to crystallize not just culturally but also politically for it set the foundation for the eventual rise of the polus or city state this transformation of the old chiefdom dominated Society into one centered around the city state was a pivotal if not turbulent period of Greek history we'll take a closer look at this and more in the next few programs on the history of ancient Greece stay tuned thanks for watching I'd also really like to thank the Channel's patrons for making videos like this possible these include but are certainly not limited to gr KCK 69 Yap de gra pasta frola Michael Lewis Danielle Allen Danny Vanek wxtv Robert Morgan strobeck Frank Tim Lane sbastian otar Korea Michael trudell leader Titan Micah G John scarberry Andrew Bower Connor Dolson chish David R Steven ball Gabe Monty Grimes France Robbins Cyrus smir Dian asra Nim Roder hypnos Brendan Redmond faridun chanji Jimmy darala anahita deu gulistan deu Shar cam Farhad K and all of the Channel's patrons on patreon for helping to support this and all future content check out the benefits to being a patreon member and if you'd like to join feel free to click the link in the video description you can also follow history with Sai on Instagram Facebook and X formerly known as Twitter as well as continue to listen to special audio programs on the history of with Sai podcast thanks again and stay safe

Channel: History with Cy

Views: 179,550

Keywords: Ancient Greece, Greek Dark Age, ancient history, history, Greek history

Id: hrBqCeyVyWI

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024