Mycenaean Greece Timeline

The drug trade in Mycenaean Greece is traced as early as 1650–1350 BC, with opium poppies being traded in the eastern Mediterranean.

In the 16th and early 15th century BC, commerce intensified, with Mycenaean pottery found on Lipari and Vivara, the coasts of Asia Minor (including Miletus, Troy, and Aulae), Cyprus, Palestine, Byblos, and Egypt.

Starting in the 15th century BC, the Mycenaeans began to spread their influence throughout the Aegean and Western Anatolia.

By c. 1450 BC, the palace of Knossos was ruled by a Mycenaean elite who formed a hybrid Minoan-Mycenaean culture.

Image source: Knossos

Excavations at Miletus, southwest Asia Minor, indicate the existence of a Mycenaean settlement there already from c. 1450 BC, replacing previous Minoan installations; it became a sizable and prosperous Mycenaean center until the 12th century BC.

Image source: Miletus

Egyptian records mention a T(D)-n-j or Danaya (Tanaju) land for the first time c. 1437 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmoses III.

In the official records of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, various references from c. 1400 BC to 1220 BC mention a country named Ahhiyawa, commonly identified with the Mycenaean (Achaean) world.

Image source: Achaeans (Homer)

The 14th century BC Uluburun shipwreck, off the coast of southern Anatolia, displays the established trade routes that supplied the Mycenaeans with raw materials such as copper and tin for bronze production.

Image source: Uluburun shipwreck

During the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (r. c. 1390–1352 BC), Egyptian records mention a number of Danaya cities covering the largest part of southern mainland Greece.

Mycenaean bronze double axes and other objects dating from the 13th century BC have been found in Ireland and in Wessex and Cornwall in England.

Under Hittite king Tudhaliya IV (r. 1267–1237 BC), the king of Ahhiyawa is recognized as a 'Great King' of equal status with the kings of Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria.

Another similar ethnonym, Ekwesh, in twelfth century BC Egyptian inscriptions has been commonly identified with the Ahhiyawans.

Image source: Achaeans (Homer)

In c. 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system (i.e., Linear A) and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B.

Image source: Linear B

From c. 1400 BC, the palace of Knossos has yielded the earliest records of the Greek Linear B script, based on the previous Linear A of the Minoans; an isolated reference to a-ka-wi-ja-de presumably refers to a Mycenaean state on the Greek mainland.

Stirrup jars, first invented on Crete during the 16th century BC, were used widely by the Mycenaeans from 1400 BC onward for transporting and storing wine and oil; they were usually pear-shaped or globular.

The cultic center of Mycenae seems to have been a later development of the 13th century BC.

Image source: Mycenae

The decipherment of Linear B demonstrated the continuity of Greek speech from the second millennium BC into the eighth century BC when a new Phoenician-derived alphabetic script emerged.

In the 8th century BC, after the end of the so-called Greek Dark Ages, Greece emerged with a network of myths and legends, the greatest of all being that of the Trojan Epic Cycle.

Various collective terms for the inhabitants of Mycenaean Greece were used by Homer in his 8th-century BC epic the Iliad in reference to the Trojan War.

Image source: Iliad

A representative piece of Mycenaean armor is the Dendra panoply (c. 1450–1400 BC), which consisted of a cuirass of a complete set of armor made up of several elements of bronze.

Image source: Dendra panoply

Palaces proper are datable from c. 1400 BC, when Cyclopean fortifications were erected at Mycenae and nearby Tiryns.

In c. 1400 BC, Hittite records mention the military activities of an Ahhiyawan warlord, Attarsiya, possibly related to the mythic character of Atreus.

Image source: Attarsiya

In 1315 BC, an anti-Hittite rebellion headed by Arzawa, a Hittite vassal state, received support from Ahhiyawa.

Later in the 13th century BC, Mycenaean warfare underwent major changes both in tactics and weaponry; armed units became more uniform and flexible, while weapons became smaller and lighter.

Chariots were initially used as fighting vehicles during the 16th to 14th centuries BC, but later, in the 13th century BC, their role was limited to battlefield transport.

In c. 1220 BC, the king of Ahhiyawa is again reported to have been involved in an anti-Hittite uprising in western Anatolia.

Around 1250 BC, the first wave of destruction apparently occurred in various centres of mainland Greece for reasons that cannot be identified by archaeologists.

The Late Helladic IIIC period (c. 1210–1040 BC) followed the palatial collapse; due to the obscure archaeological picture of 12th–11th century BC Greece, scholars continue to debate whether the impoverished successor societies were newcomers or existing populations.

Athens and the eastern coast of Attica were still occupied in the 12th century BC and were not destroyed or abandoned, pointing to new decentralized coastal and maritime networks attested by the cemetery of Perati and the LHIIIC cemetery of Drivlia at Porto Rafti.

A second wave of destruction occurred around 1190 BC or shortly thereafter, contributing to the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system.

The period from 1100–800 BC is generally termed the 'Greek Dark Ages', following the collapse of Mycenaean palatial society.

Image source: Greek Dark Ages

Mycenaean Greece, the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, came to an end around 1050 BC, transitioning into the Sub-Mycenaean period.

The transition period from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Greece is known as Sub-Mycenaean (c. 1050–1000 BC).

Image source: Sub-Mycenaean pottery

The legends of Homer's Epics were generally accepted as part of the Greek past until the 19th century, when scholars began to question Homer's historicity.

Image source: Homeric Question

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann undertook the first modern archaeological excavations in Greece at the site of Mycenae in 1876.

Image source: Heinrich Schliemann

The Linear B tablets were first discovered in Crete by English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans c. 1900.

Image source: Arthur Evans

English architect and cryptographer Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B in 1952, demonstrating it was adapted for the Indo-European Greek language of the Late Bronze Age.

Image source: Michael Ventris

A 1989 study published in The Angle Orthodontist showed remarkable similarity in craniofacial morphology between ancient Greeks (including Mycenaeans) and modern Greeks, suggesting stability over the last 4,000 years.

A 2014 study published in Anthropologischer Anzeiger indicated craniological similarities between modern Greeks and ancient Greeks (including Mycenaeans), indicating continuity.

A 2017 genetic study conducted by Lazaridis et al. found that Minoans and Mycenaean Greeks were genetically highly similar but not identical; modern Greeks resembled the Mycenaeans with some additional dilution of early Neolithic ancestry.

In a 2020 study, Polish historian Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò linguistically identified the Levites, a group known from the Bible, with the Greek term *la-wo (later laoi) – 'the people' or 'armed men'.

Image source: Levite

A 2021 study found that in the Early Bronze Age, the populations of the Minoan, Helladic, and Cycladic civilizations in the Aegean were genetically homogeneous.

Image source: Minoan civilization

A 2022 study analysed 21 new Mycenaean samples and one new Minoan sample along with previously published samples; one Mycenaean individual from Crete (c. 1370–1340 BC) had 24±6% EHG ancestry.

Paul Heggarty of the Max Planck Institute expressed doubts regarding the connection between the small contribution of Yamnaya-related ancestry in Mycenaean Greece and the steppe as the earliest source of Indo-European languages.

Image source: Indo-European migrations

A 2023 study generated genome-wide data from 95 Bronze Age individuals from mainland Greece and the Aegean, estimating ~22.3% steppe-related ancestry in southern mainland Mycenaeans and tracing possible sources including Corded Ware Germany and Western Steppe groups.