Bronze Age (3000 - 1200 BC)

• Cyclades
• Minoans (Crete)
• Mycenaeans (mainland Greece)

• Formation of Homeric Poems

• Contact w/ Near East
• Colonization & trade
• Political Changes
• Poetry & Philosophy

• 5th Century: "Age of Athens"
• Peloponnesian War (Athens v. Sparta)
• 4th c.: Alexander the Great

• Greek Kingdoms in Egypt, Near East
• Gradual conquest by Rome

Art

• Cycladic idols
• Stone & ceramic "Frying Pans"

Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941)

"Palaces"

• "agglutinative" architecture
• center of "redistributive" economy?

• fresco painting (Crete & Thera)
• pottery, e.g. octopus jugs

• ? pre-Greek Nature Goddess
• Double axe as symbol
• Importance of bull in art, ?ritual

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890)

Major centers: Mycenae, Pylos

c. 1600  Shaft Graves
c. 1500  Tholos tombs
c. 1400  Palaces w/ megara

Characteristics

• Emphasis on warfare
• Lion as royal (?) symbol

• Octopus jugs
• Mycenaeans at Knossos 1400 ->
• Writing system (Linear A > B)

Language: set of spoken sounds with agreed meanings

Writing: symbols recording those sounds

Writing systems can be alphabetic or syllabic.

Alphabet

• represents sounds (A, B ...)
• 20+ symbols
• can record most languages

• represents syllables (ba, be ...)
• 100+ symbols
• works best w/ CVCV language, e.g. Japanese

Linear A Tablets

• Found in Crete (Knossos & elsewhere)
• Undeciphered (so far)
• Syllabary used to write non-Greek  language

• Found on mainland (and from 1400  also at Knossos)
• Deciphered by Michael Ventris
• Syllabary based on Linear A but used  to write primitive form of Greek
• Administrative records (food etc.)

(Proto-)Indo-European (= IE or PIE)

• Joint ancestor of Greek, Latin, Celtic,  Germanic, Slavic, Persian, others
• Spoken roughly 4000-2500 BC (?)
• Shared words ("cognates") for:
• numbers 1-10
• body parts & organs
• family relationships
• misc. (birch-tree, horse etc.)
• IE Mythology
• Sky-god (*Dyaus -> Zeus)
• Hell-hound (cf. Cerberus)
• Divine twins (cf. Castor & Pollux)

• Many place names (e.g. Corinth)
• Local trees, animals etc.
• Miscellaneous words, e.g. "bathtub"
• Mythology: mother/nature goddess