 The prehistoric culture of mainland Greece is called Helladic. The extraordinary material wealth deposited in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae by an emergent elite in the 16th Century B.C. represents the foundation of a powerful society that flourishes in the subsequent four centuries, a period commonly called Mycenaean. Contact with Minoan Crete played a decisive role in the shaping and development of Mycenaean culture, especially in the arts. The Mycenaeans were great engineers who designed and built remarkable bridges, fortification walls, beehive-shaped tombs, and elaborate drainage and irrigation systems. Their palatial centers–"Mycenae rich in gold" and sandy Pylos," to name two– are immortalized in Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Palace scribes employed a new script, Linear B, to record an early Greek language. Mycenaean goods, and even outposts, were widespread around the Mediterranean Sea from Spain to the Levant. However, a wave of destruction in the late thirteenth century B.C. destroyed the palatial civilization, and the end of the twelfth century saw further collapse bringing a "Dark Age" in the eleventh century B.C. |
