Mycenaean Civilization

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Mycenaean Civilization

The Mycenaean civilization flourished for four hundred years in the late Bronze Age before collapsing in to small bands of subsistence farmers. Some historians attribute this decline to ‘the Sea People’ who terrorized the Egyptians, Anatolians and the Hittites. But could a mysterious people who left no archeological proof of their existence really bring about the collapse of entire civilizations?

Mycenaean civilization is characterized by the large palace-like buildings that they created. These huge structures contained dozens of rooms used for a variety of purposes.

The rooms were used for everything from industry to meeting places and even sleeping quarters. The main function of these palatial buildings seemed to be economical. From clay tablets that have been accidentally preserved through fire historians know that the Mycenaean employed a ‘palace economy.’ The tablets, written in an ancient script called Linear B, are mostly records of good coming in and out of the palace. A palace economy was maintained by trading the surplus of goods produced by farmers and craftsmen with other cities around the eastern Mediterranean. Mycenaean pottery has been found in ancient sites in Palestine and Syria as well as Miletus, Rhodes and Egypt and it is a testament to the extent of trade that Mycenaean had with other cultures . It was essential that the trade routes be kept safe in order to maintain the flow of goods. By about 1300bce Mycenaean wares had been so standardized that regional differences were impossible to detect . This suggests that during the late Bronze Age, Mycenaean culture had become increasingly unified economically. The tablets found at Pylos suggest that Mycenaean must have used slaves to d...

... middle of paper ...

...at fragile. A collapse in trade due in part to overspecialization and increasing aggression by the ‘Sea People’ and others, catalyzed by natural disasters eventually led to the economic collapse of the eastern Mediterranean market. After this the large palaces with their complex administration were no longer needed and could no longer be sustained.

People simply abandoned to cities and went back to subsistence farming until they slowly rekindled an empire.

REFERENCES

Huxley, G.L.. Achaeans and Hittites. Oxford, The Queen’s University. 1965.

Palmer, Leonard R.. Mycenaeans and Minoans. London, Faber and Faber. 1961.

Sanders, N.K.. The Sea Peoples. London, Thames and Hudson. 1978.

Velikovsky, Immanuel. Peoples of the Sea. Garden City, Doubleday & Company. 1977.

Wood, Michael. In Search of the Trojan War. London, British Broadcasting Corporation. 1985.

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