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by Van Bryan
January 12, 2026
from
ClassicalWisdom Website
Imagine one day waking up to a world gone... dark.
Suddenly there was no internet. No Wi-Fi or signal,
no electricity, and no gas.
Credit cards didn't work and banks were permanently
closed.
Modern, advanced life as we know it had ceased to
exist.
What
would happen next? Who would rise and who would fall?
While the ancient people in 1177 BC didn't enjoy the
exact level of technological advances that we rely upon
today, they had a moment when everything they knew
suddenly, irrevocably, changed forever.
Great kingdoms that had dominated for centuries,
...were shaken by a wave of destruction so vast that
cities burned, trade routes vanished, and writing itself
disappeared in some regions.
...may all have played a role.
But
no single explanation tells the whole story.
Indeed, while there are many theories (and a multitude
of configurations of said theories), to this date we
still don't know what happened exactly to the Bronze Age
people...
For the Mycenaeans, this collapse meant the end of
palaces, the loss of literacy, and centuries of silence.
Their towering citadels, once alive with gold,
diplomacy, and power, fell into ruin.
We are left with fragments:
burned cities, broken tablets, abandoned roads...
and yet, from those ashes would rise the myths that
still shape us today:
Achilles, Odysseus, Troy...
But
what truly happened? Why did so many civilizations fall
together? And what can their collapse teach us
about our own fragile world?
So let us look at what we know... and what we don't
know... about the fierce warriors, the ambitious
engineers, and the culture that inspired Homer's great
epics, in today's exploration of the rise, the fall, and
the enduring mystery of the Mycenaeans...
Anya
Leonard
Founder and Director
Classical Wisdom
The Rise, the Fall, and...
The
Mystery of the Mycenaeans
by Van Bryan
Stereoscopic image of the gate,
photographed in 1897,
showing
portions of the wall that had collapsed
and now have
been replaced on the right side of the sculpture
Before the time of a democratic Athens, or a conquering Alexander
the Great, there existed a fledgling Greek society that remains
shrouded in mystery.
A time so mysterious, that it was often regarded
by the Classical Greeks as a time constructed by myth more
than by man.
It was a civilization that appeared from nothing, building palatial
city-states and expanding trade across the known world. They
conquered neighboring societies and waged wars that would become
legend hundreds of years later.
A society that once ruled the Late Bronze Age of
Greece, they promptly vanished from history and slowly faded into
legend.
They were
the Mycenaeans...
The
Bronze Age of ancient Greece, which
lasted from about 3000 to 1200 BCE, is the historical backdrop for
much of Greek mythology as well as the Homeric epics The Iliad
and The Odyssey.
It was a time period that fascinated the
classical Greeks and prompted many stories of Trojan wars and
meddling gods. And for the longest time that is what people
believed they were, stories...
It wasn't until 1872 that
Heinrich Schliemann, a German
businessman turned archaeologist, uncovered a Bronze Age, walled
citadel that would be identified as the ancient city of Troy.
Heinrich Schliemann
Four years later Schliemann began excavation of the fabled city of
Mycenae in southern Greece which,
according to legend, had been ruled by King
Agamemnon, the conqueror of
Troy.
Lavish tombs filled with gold were quickly
uncovered. Schliemann even uncovered a gold burial mask that he
believed had once belonged to Agamemnon himself.
It became clear that the stories of the ancients
had been more than myth...
...but what is the history of the Mycenaeans...?
The Mycenaean civilization sprang to life
suddenly in southern and central Greece in about 1600 BCE.
Developing from seemingly nothing, this
civilization would grow to prominence and become one of the most
dominant civilizations of the in Aegean for hundreds of years.
It is believed that the Mycenaean civilization owes much of its
growth to the neighboring,
Minoan civilization on the island
of Crete.
Trade relations between Crete and mainland Greece
began around 2000 BCE and transformed an infantile collection of
tribes into a flourishing Bronze Age civilization.
Along with goods for trade, the Minoans seemingly transported their
entire societal structure to the fledgling Mycenaeans.
The Mycenaeans accepted gladly and adopted much
of Minoan culture; including their writing system, their city-state
model, as well as their architecture.
It was in this way that the Mycenaeans took the dramatic steps from
clustered tribes to advanced society.
The similarities between the Minoans and the
Mycenaeans were so striking that the early archaeologist, Sir
Arthur Evans, concluded that
the palaces of mainland Greece had to have been conquered and
occupied by Cretan kings.
This idea was largely accepted for several
decades.
Mask of Agamemnon
It wasn't until the early 1950's that
Michael Ventris, a talented
British linguist, decoded several tablets found at the palace
complex of Pylos on the south-western mainland of Greece.
He discovered that the writing, although
using Minoan style, was actually written in Greek...
This meant that it was not the Minoans that
invaded the Mycenaeans... It was main land Greece that invaded the
island nation of Crete.
This explained why almost every Minoan palace was burned to the
ground around 1490.
Knossos, the legendary palace
of King Minos, is one of the few remaining structures that was
spared by the Mycenaean invaders...
During the height of the Mycenaean reign, palaces
extended throughout southern and central Greece.
Trade was established in all directions including
modern day Italy, Turkey and Egypt. From bronze weapons and armor
found in tombs, as well as from frescos and vase paintings, we know
that the Mycenaeans were capable of conducting warfare on a large
scale.
The invention of the chariot around 1600 BCE, allowed for brutal
charges against enemy lines.
Similar to stories told in
The Iliad, it is believed that
military leaders would have fought alongside infantry during the
numerous military engagements.
The Triumph of
Achilles
The Mycenaean civilization reached a peak in 1300 BCE and would most
likely have been one of the dominant empires in the Aegean region.
It is strange then, that only 100 years later,
around 1200 BCE, the civilization began to disappear.
The Mycenaean palaces, still functioning and
filled with treasure, were abandoned. Villages and towns were burned
to the ground and the once content civilians were scattered across
Greece.
By the end of the 12th century, the palace system that
had constituted the power of the Mycenaean civilization, had
vanished.
The Greeks were not alone in their suffering. Around 1200, much of
the eastern Mediterranean region was overwhelmed with turmoil.
Civilizations in Italy, Anatolia and Syria
were slowly destroyed by this new menace that had consumed the
land.
The kingdom of Egypt was one of the few
civilizations that managed to repel these mysterious invaders.
Egypt was attacked numerous times in the early 12th
century, yet managed to maintain control over their empire.
Ancient Egyptian texts describe the attackers as "men from the
northern lands" and "people of the countries of the sea".
Interestingly enough; at this same time the
ancient city of Troy fell to invaders and was burned around 1250
BCE.
Homer would then seem to suggest that it
was the Mycenaeans who were the invaders who tried, and failed, to
conquer Egypt.
The Greek civilization would have been damaged by
a costly war and become easy prey for marauding bands of warriors
from the north and west of Greece.
Still others believe that the Mycenaean civilization self
destructed, in a manner of speaking...
Wars between palace-states, slave revolts, or
inappropriate agricultural practices could have lead to a
weakened Mycenaean empire which would then be vulnerable to
other attackers.
We may never know what truly killed the Mycenaean
civilization so abruptly and with such finality.
A civilization that rose to prominence in 1600
BCE, they would remain intact for only 400 years. Their sudden
disappearance would plunge Greece into
a 'dark' age for hundreds of years.
When civilization did begin to reform with the coming of the Archaic
and then Classical periods of Greece, it would be so different from
the Mycenaeans that the Greeks, when they looked back on their past,
would imagine it as something of a dream world where gods
and men mingled together...
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