Who were the Ancient Greeks?

Minoans, Mycenaeans, Dark Ages

In the beginning…

• There was no “Greece” for a very long time, they were CITY-STATES
• Timeline (leaving out bunches of steps)
• Minoans
• Mycenaeans
• Dark Ages
• Athens/Sparta
• Alexander the Great (Hellenism)

Minoans

• “First Greeks” title… though they weren’t Greeks.
• Tribes from Asia Minor to Crete 2700 BCE
• Palace at Knossos is most famous place (discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans-weird guy)
• Famous for complicated buildings, Greek-style government/living, trading with everyone, frescoes, and myths

​

​

Minoan Art

What can you tell me about this people, based upon this fresco?

​

​

​

(vocab hint, a fresco is a painting done in wet plaster)

​

Minoans: Daily Life

• Language:
• Linear A- not yet fully deciphered
• Linear B- described all about the details of daily life (lots of bureaucratic record keeping)

​

• Famous for frescoes
• A fresco is where the artist paints onto wet plaster so when it dries the artist rendition is part of the wall rather than painted “on” the wall.

​

​

Minoans: Daily Life

• “Worshipped” Bulls
• They were polytheistic and bulls were very important in their traditions (myth of the Minotaur takes place here)

​

• City & Building Design was very complicated
• When you look at the ruins of the Palace of Knossos, it looks like a giant maze (or Labyrinth)

​

​

End of the Minoans

• Destroyed by Volcanic eruption and subsequent tidal wave
• Probably the same one that took out the island of Thera- which could have been the ancient basis of Atlantis

Mycenaeans

• They were the “kings” of Ancient Greece, the ones talked about in epic poems of Homer.

​

• Social Hierarchy was super important

​

• What we know about them comes from artifacts and legends

Mycenaeans: Myth & Legend

Remember: Curse of the House of Atreus

Tantalus served his son as a stew to the gods to see if they were all-knowing. Demeter, who had just lost her daughter, ate some and became quite upset. His punishment was to be hungry and thirsty forever with food and drink just out of reach. Started the Curse.

​

​

NOT GREEK ART!!!

Mythical King: Agamemnon

Agamemnon’s family woes

His brother’s wife ran off and he needed to go to war to get her back. The winds weren’t cooperating, so he sacrificed his daughter to the gods. He went to the Trojan War, survived, brought back a princess as a prize, and gets murdered by his wife and her new guy (Agamemnon’s cousin, Aegisthus). Agamemnon’s surviving children (Electra and Orestes) don’t do well either. (Know this from Aeschylus’ Oresteia)

Mycenae

• The city itself is surrounded by tall walls, with fancy, new keystone techniques. The most famous part has a lion detail carved into it.

​

• The city also has tholos tombs, which look like beehives

Dorians Arrive: Dark Ages

Indo-Europeans settled in after the decline of the Mycenaeans

(about 1100 BCE)

• They were nomadic herders (burned everything they came across)
• Warring factions from Greece attacked their civilizations
• Greek Dark Age ensued
• Eventually classical Greece emerged (Athens, Sparta, Democracy, all that fun)

​

Minoan

Mycenaean

Dorian (Doric)

The end of the world as they knew it...