The Mycenaean Civilization Its geographic center is Mycenae , a fortified city in the Argolis region, located on the Peloponnese peninsula .
This civilization also called Creto-Mycenaean to follow the tradition of the first, developed between 1600 and 1104 BC. year in which the Dorians from the north invaded and destroyed it.
Other Mycenaean cultural centers include:Tiryns located further south of Mycenae, close to the sea and Troy , located in Asia Minor, near the Elespont.
1. Commercial activity
To understand the Mycenaean culture as a whole, it is necessary to know the relationships that united the peoples of the Mediterranean basin and it was precisely trade that was the means of communication and material and cultural exchange . Mainly wine, olive oil, and manufactured copper and bronze products were exported.
In many geographical points lived a foreign population that made contact with civilization and was perhaps governed by the Creto-Mycenaean peoples.
There is evidence of Mycenaean trade:
East , along the coast of Asia Minor, the city of Miletus achieved an enviable economic development. Likewise, in northern Syria, the Mycenaean commercial center was the city of Ugarit, present-day Ras Shamra.
West , extended their activities to southern Italy, where they founded the factory in Taras (today Taranto). They continued with Sicily, Sardinia and the French coasts to Spain.
South , Egypt located northeast of the African continent was an excellent market for Mycenaean exports.
In greater detail, Syria provided them with copper and tin; Spain, tin and silver; Sardinia, silver; Egypt and Nubia, gold; the Mas Baltic countries, amber; Cyprus, copper; ivory came from southern Africa. It is also assumed that at this time he worked the old tin mines in the southwest of England.
2. Culture development
The Mycenaean civilization inherited in many aspects the cultural elements of the Cretans but when it came into contact with the peoples of the East, it reached its maximum cultural development.
2.1 Architecture
Mycenae stands out for its extraordinary cyclopean walls .
The main access is built by the gate of lions , named for a slab resting on a door lintel, on the surface of which are two lions in relief flanked symmetrically by a column.
It was impossible for later generations to believe that these enormous constructions were erected by the hand of man, reason enough to see them as the work of mythological beings, Cyclops , gigantic beings with a single eye in the middle of the forehead.
The gigantic domed tombs, the largest vaulted constructions in the world, also date from the same period. A thousand years later the Romans built the pantheon, according to this model.
On a promontory they built the acropolis or citadel, which served in turn as a palace and a temple.
They introduced the vault and the gabled or double-sloped roof, whose characteristics were perpetuated until the times of Classical Greece.
2.2 Ceramics
After the fall of Knossos, artistic supremacy passed to Mycenae, whose artists continued the Cretan tradition, without fundamentally changing tastes or decorative motifs. The same thing happened with metallurgy and other arts.
2.3 The writing
Many archives have been found consisting of clay tablets . The English Michael Ventris and John Chadwick revealed the secret of syllabic writing (called linear B as opposed to linear A, older and primitive Minoan hieroglyphics) very fashionable in the fifteenth century BC, they found that the language of these inscriptions is Greek , the same one used by Plato and Homer , many centuries later.
2.4 Religion
They met numerous gods of Olympus, the same ones that were venerated in the following centuries such as:Athena, Poseidon, Pean (Apollo), Enialios (Ares), Zeus, Hera and Dionysus. With regard to this last divinity, Homer did not give rise to him on Olympus, which is why it is thought that he came from the East.
This Brilliant Civilization ended in the 12th century BC. when the Dorians invaded the Peleponese.