Ancient Greece – Mycenae

Mycenaean Civilization
The early Greek people were called the Mycenaeans. They lived in an area of Greece called Mycenae. They were rich, and liked art and war. They started to have power in Greece around 1600 BC, when they built small cities with lots of protection. They had palaces for their kings with strong walls.

In 1450 BC, the Mycenaean took over the Greek island of Crete and the Minoan people who lived there. They started to trade by sea, and made colonies on other Greek islands. They also changed the writing of the Minoans into an early form of Greek writing, which is why we can understand the Minoan writing today.

The Mycenaean worshipped many of the same gods as the late Greeks, including Poseidon, Apollo, and Zeus. Their art was usually about war. They made bronze ships, armor, and weapons, and gold masks. The Mycenaean are famous for their shaft tombs, which were graves for the dead that were very deep and narrow and dug into rock.

The Mycenaean civilization ended around 1120 BC. We don’t know the reason, but it happened at the same time as the end of many other civilizations in the same area. It might have happened because a people called the Aegean Sea People invaded Greece. After the Mycenaeans disappeared, there were the dark ages in Greece. Dark ages are a time in history where we don’t know what happened for many years. 

Ancient Greece And The Birth Of Democracy
After these dark ages, city-states started to form in Greece. Ancient Greece changed culture and science, and so they changed the whole empire. This led to civilizations like Rome civilization and, much later, the United States. 

In about 730 BC, life in Ancient Greece got bigger. Towns grew, sea trade grew, and people in Greece were able to grow more crops. Small towns grew into large city-states. Athens, Sparta, Corinth and Thebes were the most important city-states between 650 and 480 BC. They were always at war with each other. But once every four years, they got together to have the Olympic games. 

With more trade, more people learned to read. A man named Pythagoras invented a way to measure the area of shapes in math. Greece even traded built cities in countries that were far away, like Egypt.

Most people agree that the greatest time in Greece was Classical Greece, from 480 to 336 BC. At this time, Greece had hundreds of city-states, called polis, and Athens ruled because it was the most powerful.

Persians kept trying to take over Greek land, and Greece and Persia were often at war.  Sparta also tried to invade Athens, but Athens won. Athens made the world’s first democracy. A democracy is a type of government where everybody gets to vote. But in the democracy in Athens, women, slaves, children, and foreigners weren’t allowed to vote, even though they were 85-90% of the population. At the same time, two kings ruled in Sparta.

In 431-404 BC, Athens and Sparta went to war again, but this time Sparta won. Sparta now ruled Greece, and Athens was never as powerful as it used to be again. In 411 BC, Sparta got rid of democracy in Athens.

In 339 BC, Phillip II of Macedonia (a neighbor kingdom of Greece) conquered Ancient Greece. This was the end of the age of Classical Greece.

Vocabulary

worship—show love and respect for a god, goddess, or many gods
invade—to move into a place by attacking the people who are there
dark ages—a time in history there was no writing to tell us what happened
city-state—a city that rules itself like a country, but it much smaller and part of a group of other cities
democracy—a kind of government where everyone can vote and has equal rights
population—the people of an area, or the number of people in an area
conquer—win at war and rule a people or place

City-States in Ancient and Classical Greece

Greek City-States

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Athens Vs. Sparta

 

 

 

 

 

Mycenaean Shaft Tombs