Encyclopaedia Britannica - Ancient civilizations-2

belief that the language of these tablets was a very archaic form of Greek was established in 1952 by the English architect and cryptographer Michael Ventris, working with the linguist John Chadwick, though acceptance of this is not yet universal. In 1962 a large palace, destroyed by fire about 1450 bc at Zákros in eastern Crete, was discovered. In 1967 the Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos followed up Fouqué’s explorations with excavations at modern Akrotíri on the south coast of Thera. He uncovered a whole town buried under the volcanic eruption and so preserved in wonderful detail.

Early Aegean civilizations

Early cultures

Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)

Chipped stone tools made by Paleolithic hunters have been found in many parts of mainland Greece, but none are yet recorded from Crete or the other islands. As elsewhere in Europe, the latest Lower Paleolithic industries evolved into Upper Paleolithic ones with diminutive stonework. The excavations of Thomas W. Jacobsen at the Franchthi Cave on the Bay of Argos showed that boats already sailed to the island of Melos north of Crete for obsidian, a volcanic glass invaluable for early tools, by about 13,000–11,000 bc and that the cultivation of hybrid grains, the domestication of animals, and organized community tuna hunts had already begun.

Neolithic (New Stone Age)

If radiocarbon dates are to be trusted, agriculture was being practiced in some parts of the Aegean area as early as the 7th millennium. The first agriculturalists in the Aegean, like those of Anatolia and Palestine, may have been ignorant of the art of making fired clay vases—traces of agricultural settlements without pottery have been identified at several places in Thessaly and at Knossos in Crete. The island of Crete appears to have been uninhabited before this time, and the first agriculturalists must have reached it by sea from western Anatolia or from somewhere more distant. Other immigrants from the east may have brought agricultural techniques and ways of life to the mainland, where they mingled with the Upper Paleolithic hunting peoples. For human habitation the Aegean is one of the most favoured regions of the Mediterranean basin. Immigrants from the coastal areas of Anatolia, Syria, or Palestine would have found the climate and ecology similar to what they had known in their homelands. The olive and vine, sources of oil and wine, the staples of the Mediterranean diet, grow in most parts of the Aegean area and may have been native there. Water, which is a problem in the present century, was probably more abundant in early times when forests were more extensive than they are today.

Agricultural communities were eventually established in every part of Greece. They made pottery by hand and ground stones to shape edged tools, axes, adzes, and chisels. Wheat, barley, oats, millet, lentils, and peas were among the crops grown, supplementing wild grapes, pears, nuts, and honey. The inhabitants continued to hunt and fish, though they also raised cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Arrowheads of chipped stone were used on the mainland and in the Cyclades, but none is recorded from Crete, where bone points may have served to tip arrows. Another long-range weapon was the sling, and clay sling pellets were made in Thessaly where suitable beach pebbles were not available. In Crete, clubs were armed with stone heads as in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East in early times. Houses with rectangular rooms are attested at Knossos in Crete, at Saliagos in the Cyclades, and at Nea Nikomedia in Macedonia. Some Aegean communities, however, may have lived in circular huts of the kind found in predynastic Egypt and in early Syria and Cyprus. By the Middle Neolithic, there existed independent walled acropolis towns with specialized industries like potteries; Sesklo is an important site several acres in extent, with nearly 30 houses, a sophisticated gate, and striking red-and-white pottery. In the Late Neolithic, walled communities with special big houses that had megarons (central halls), as at Dhimini, suggest social hierarchies and dominant chiefs.

Several Thessalian settlements were surrounded by defense walls or ditches. Copper tools—simple, flat axes and knives—were in use before the end of the Neolithic both in Crete and on the mainland.

The Bronze Age

The Early Bronze Age (c. 3000–2200)

The transition from Neolithic to Bronze Age in the Aegean was marked by changes in pottery and other aspects of material culture. These changes may reflect the arrival in Crete and the Cyclades of new people from lands farther east bringing knowledge of metalworking with them. In Crete and the islands, the changes that inaugurated the Bronze Age were more or less contemporary with the beginning of dynastic times in Egypt. The Bronze Age in the Peloponnese appears to have begun later under the influence of settlers from the islands. The Bronze Age in central Greece and Thessaly may have begun later still. Evolved types of metal tools appear to have been current considerably before the end of the Neolithic there.

Flourishing metal-using cultures were established by the middle of the 3rd millennium in Crete, the Cycladic islands, and the southern part of the mainland. Each of these three cultures had its own distinctive characteristics; however, they had much in common, and their peoples may have spoken the same or similar non-Greek languages. Many place-names throughout the Aegean—notably ones ending in -nt- and -ss-, such as Corinth and Knossos—seem to reflect a time when a group of related languages with probable Anatolian affinities was spoken there before the introduction of Greek. A large number of words came to be adopted into Greek from this earlier language group.

These Early Bronze Age peoples of the Aegean seem to have employed similar types of metal tools, including axes, adzes, and short daggers, but double axes may have been special to Crete. Tweezers were used for plucking facial hairs, and rectangular stone palettes for grinding face paints with small pestles made of attractive veined stones or Spondylus shell.

Lerna and other settlements on the mainland were eventually surrounded by massive walls with projecting towers, and neighbouring islands like Aigina or Syros in the Cyclades also had towered walls with trap gates. Houses with several rooms were being constructed in most parts of the Aegean by this time, and buildings at Knossos and at Vasilikí in Crete have been identified as the residences of local rulers. The so-called House of Tiles at Lerna, destroyed by fire toward the end of the period, appears to have been an important focus for the community. A massive rectangle two stories high, with a roofed balcony upstairs, the structure takes its name from the baked clay tiles found in its ruins. These small, flat tiles are thought to have come from a sloping roof and may be the earliest roof tiles known. Similar tiles were recovered from a huge circular structure of the same period at neighbouring Tiryns, of which only a section has been excavated, as it lies deep below the level of the later Mycenaean palace there. It was evidently a public building of some kind.

Cretans in the Early Bronze Age buried their dead in communal tombs. These belonged to clans or extended families and might have remained in use for many generations. Traces of hundreds of burials have been noted in some of them. Caves and rock-shelters, as well as buildings of various kinds, were used as tombs. Circular tombs were characteristic of the Mesara region of southern

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