This is the essay for the 2nd week of the 9th Grade Tom Woods Homeschool. It’s A Summary of some key points about Mycenaean Greece.

Excavation

Mycenaean Greece indirectly discovered by Heinrich Sleiman. He wasn’t an archaeologist at all. He was just a businessman. When he lived it was believed that Greek history started at 800 BC. This makes it impossible for the books of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey to have taken place. Sleiman was such a huge fan of the books that he believed that they were true. He went to Turkey to prove the historicists wrong and show them that the Trojan war actually took place. Sleman actually found evidence of war there and thus headed off to Greece to prove that Agea existed as well. What he found was the remains of the Mycenaean civilization. The name Mycenaean came from the name of their capital Mycenae.

Fall

The Mycenaean civilization fell at 1990 BC, during the Bronze age collapse. There are a few theories of why it collapsed. The two theories are, the Dorians invaded the Mycenaean civilization or that there was an internal conflict. They are both highly debated by historians. Another thing that is highly debated is the Greek dark ages that came right after the collapse of the Mycenaeans. Some people think that the dates have been calibrated wrongly and the art during this period just hasn’t been excavated yet. This is based off that these dates are based off Egyptian events and due to them being calibrated wrong, there is now a gap in Greek history. This is called the Velikovsky thesis.

Writing System

The Mycenaean writing system was Linear B. It was like Linear A made up of syllables, but, unlike Linear A has actually been deciphered. These were mostly written on clay tablets as well. Linear B was a dialect of old Greek and it is the oldest known one.