Unit 1:: Archaic and Early Classical Greece
A Milestone Documents E-text
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Unit 1: Archaic and Early ClassicalGreece
https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844582.book.part.001

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Abstract

At the end of the twelfth century BCE, Bronze Age Grecian cultures went into a decline that lasted for almost five hundred years. The civilization of the Achaeans, who had dominated the Aegean, disappeared, along with the Bronze Age palaces that had characterized their culture. The art of writing and certain types of decorative pottery vanished. Many former Mycenaean centers were overrun (according to tradition by Dorians, Greek-speaking tribesmen from the north). Those who fled the chaos scattered around the Aegean Sea, congregating in such places as the islands of the northern Aegean or Ionia on the west coast of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

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