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The Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1100 BC–750 BC) refers to Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BC to the first Greek city-states in the 9th century BC.
The archaeological evidence shows a collapse of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean world during this period, as the great palaces and cities of the Myceneans were destroyed or abandoned. Around this time, the Hittite civilization collapsed and cities from Troy to Gaza were destroyed. The writing of Greek language appears to cease. Greek Dark Age pottery has simple geometric designs and lacks the figurative decoration of Mycenean ware. The Greeks of the Dark Age lived in fewer and smaller settlements suggesting famine and depopulation. It was previously thought that contact was lost between foreign powers during this period yielding little cultural progress or growth; however, artifacts from excavations at Lefkandi on the Lelantine Plain in Euboea suggest that there was significant culture and trade links with the east, particularly Asia Minor.
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One theory holds that the Mycenaean civilization was undermined by an ecological catastrophe. The hill-top-fortress-dwelling, forest-fauna-hunting, horse-based society depicted in Homer and Hesiod was supplanted by a trading culture connected more closely to the sea. The ecological deterioration was the loss of forests through human exploitation, making the prior economic structure unsustainable. Plato mentions something of this in his theory about goats denuding the hills of flora, causing erosion which led to loss of forestation. One commentator, Massey, speculates that this sense of there having been a golden age long ago is connected with this disaster and has continued as a cultural meme in societies and cultures with roots in Classical Greece. On this reading, the collapse which resulted in the Greek Dark Ages is not due primarily to a Dorian invasion, but rather to environmental damage in the first, or a contributing, instance.
Kings ruled throughout this period until they were replaced with an aristocracy. In many Greek poleis a new phenomenon - the tyrant - displaced the ruling aristocracy, often backed by an increasingly confident hoplite class (e.g. Kypselos of Corinth) as warfare shifted from using cavalry to deploying a lightly-armed infantry. Cheap to produce and readily available, iron replaced bronze in tools and weaponry.
Families began to reconstruct their past in attempts to link their bloodlines with heroes from the Trojan War, especially Heracles.
Some historians believe the epics of Homer preserve an oral tradition dating back to the Dark Ages. The historical validity of Homer\'s writings is vigorously disputed; see the article on Troy for a discussion.
At the end of this period of stagnation, the Greek civilization experienced a renaissance that spread the Greek colonies to the Black Sea in the east and Spain in west.
The syllabary of the Mycenaean Linear B script was replaced with a new alphabet system, adopted from the Phoenicians. The Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, notably introducing scripts for vowel sounds and creating the first truly alphabetic (as opposed to syllabic) writing system. The adapted alphabet quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean and was used to write not only the Greek language, but also other languages in the Eastern Mediterranean. As Greece sent out colonies west towards Sicily and Italy, the influence of their new alphabet extended further. The Etruscans benefited from the innovation: Old Italic variants spread throughout Italy from the 8th century. Other variants of the alphabet appear on the Lemnos Stele and in the alphabets of Asia Minor. The previous Linear scripts were not completely abandoned: the Cypriot syllabary, descended from Linear A, remained in use on Cyprus in Greek and Eteocypriot inscriptions until the Hellenistic era.
It is around this time that large-scale revolts took place and attempts to overthrow existing kingdoms by surrounding people who were already plagued with famine, hardships but most likely as a result of economic and political instability occurring in whole of the Mediterranean. The Hittite kingdom was invaded and conquered by the so-called Sea Peoples, a group of peoples originating from surrounding areas around the Mediterranean, such as the Black Sea, the Aegean and Anatolian regions. A similar assemblage of peoples may have attempted to invade Egypt twice, once during the reign of Merneptah about 1224 BC, and then again during the reign of Ramesses III about 1186 BC. War monuments were built by the Egyptians for each conflict. The 13th and 12th c inscriptions and carvings at Karnak and Luxor are the only sources for Sea Peoples, a term invented by the Egyptians themselves (Sandars 1978).
"The foreign countries...made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were on the move, scattered in war. No country could stand before their arms...Their league was Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh" [Edgerton and Wilson 1936, pl 46, p.53; and Wilson, J. \'Egyptian Historical Texts\' in Pritchard 1969.]
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