The Mycenaean civilization was the first powerful military culture of Ancient Greece. Though short-lived, their legacy is unmistakable.
The Mycenaeans, a civilization made up of herdsmen and warriors, prevailed in the south of Greece from approximately 1600 - 1100 BCE (before the Christian Era). The stuff of legend and fantasy, Mycenae has been the focus many archaeological excavations and investigations throughout the last several centuries, most notably with the work of Heinrich Schliemann, a noted Anthropologist whose desperate attempts to locate the legendary city of Troy helped to unearth a treasure trove of fortified palace complexes, burial tombs, and a cache of gold and bronze items comparable to the tomb of Tutankhamen. The Mycenaeans were Greece's first real military and economic powerhouse, whose extensive trade network and military conquests were sadly short-lived, much like their influential predecessors, the Minoans.
Each Mycenaean city was remotely located and heavily fortified, obviously due to their fondness for conquest throughout the Aegean region. The Mycenaean city was ruled by a king who was a member of the landowning aristocracy, known as the wanax. The king controlled the land, trade, and probably every other economic function of the city. The palace complex of the king in a Mycenaean city was imposing, with large fortification walls and stone gates that were meant to intimidate as well as impress would-be defeaters.
Mycenaean Achievements
Mycenaean burials were located in vast tholos tombs. These tombs were engineering and construction marvels, erected using corbelled arches and a post and lintel design. Cut into a hillside, the doorway of the tholos tomb often weighed several tons.
The Mycenaeans were a war-loving culture, whose conquests via their naval fleets no doubt aided in their efforts to build a vast trade network. They succeeded in this, and were able to import metals not available in their home region, such as gold and bronze. With these metals, they were able to become accomplished metalworkers, fashioning fantastic pieces of jewelry, funerary masks, and of course, weaponry.
Mycenaean Communication
It is known that the Mycenaeans spoke an early form of the Greek language. And they had a written language as well, known as Linear B. Unlike the Minoans' Linear A, Linear B has been translated. The stone tablets left behind detail economic dealings and other business communications, and thanks to English architect Michael Ventris, who was able to crack the Linear B code in 1952, scholars and archaeologists are able to get a true sense of Mycenaean culture.
The Mycenaean culture drew to a close sometime around 1050 BCE. Like the Minoans, the Mycenaeans enjoyed too short of a reign. When the Mycenaeans fell, all of Greece fell into a long period devoid of cultural or scientific development, known as the Dark Ages, from which it did not recover for a few hundred years, with the onset of the early Classical period.
Unlike the Minoan civilization, the Mycenaeans left their mark in the form of decipherable writings, in addition to a great deal of archaeological evidence. The excavations of the fortified palace complexes, tholos tombs, and other Mycenaean treasures at sites like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pilos, and Thebes have provided a wealth of information from which scholars can learn who the real Mycenaeans were. They are part historical in their ties to Greek culture, and they are part fantasy in their ties to the legends of Homer and the Trojan War.
