The Mycenaean
The Mycenaean's entered Greece from the north around 2000 B.C., replacing the older Neolithic culture. These new Indo-European Greek-speaking intruders brought with them highly developed techniques in architecture, pottery, and metallurgy . The Mycenaean's loved fighting and hunting wild animals like the wild boar and the wolf; they painted the walls of their palaces with war scenes rather than beautiful ladies.
The Mycenaean's were keen traders. There ships voyaged to Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Trading contact with Crete enabled the Mycenaean's to learn new technology and this greatly influenced their culture. By 1600 B.C. the Mycenae was firmly established as an important center of the ancient world. The Mycenaean were widely known in ancient times for their maritime command of the Mediterranean. Mycenaean palaces were built around great halls called megara. The Mycenaean's were bearded and wore armor in battle. Their written language, preserved on numerous clay tablets appears to be a form of archaic Greek.
Homer called the Mycenaean's, Achaeans. In his epic poem, the Iliad he tells how the Achaeans, led by kings Achilles and Agamenemmon, tried for ten years to take the city of Troy. Fierce battles in which even the gods were supposed to have taken part led to the death of many heroes. At last the Greeks pretended to sail away but left a large, hollow wooden horse outside the Trojan wall. Inside were Greeks, under the command of the cunning Odysseus. The Trojans were curious and dragged the huge wooden horse inside the city. After dark, Odysseus's men climbed out and attacked the guards. The rest of the Greeks returned to Troy and the city was destroyed.
At the ULUMBAM site in modern day Turkey, George Bass and his team of nautical archaeologist have uncovered many Mycenaean artifacts. Bass describes a particularly significant find " The writing tablet (a boxwood diptych with ivory hinge; the inner faces of the boxwood "covers" were once coated with beeswax on which someone wrote with a stylus). It matches the tablet mentioned by Homer in the Iliad, in his only mention of writing in either of his famous poems; classical scholars had long assumed that such a tablet could not have existed at the time of the Trojan War in the Late Bronze Age."
