History of the Mycenaean Athens (1600-1100 BC)
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
- We know Athens as the epitome of the Classical democracy and one of the most celebrated city-states of ancient Greece. In this video, we talk about the Athenian beginnings in the Bronze Age, from its foundation until the Mycenaean collapse.
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It’s interesting how the Dorians came out on top in the Bronze Age collapse, the Spartan-Athenian war, and in the Macedonian wars, and yet it was the descendant of the Ionian dialect that took over Greece and largely survived to this day.
Probably because the Dorians were too warlike and they didn't bother to leave anything written except receipts and calculations contrary to the Ionians.
@@johndistick9702 people tend to not realize a lot of the Greek stuff their reading is Athenian propaganda. THey also tend to forget Athens was infamous for being warlike and draconian. The dorians had their flaws but their usually isolationist. until they started building an empire after the 2nd Peloponnesian war.
History with Cy sent me. Love your channel. Subscribed!
Appreciate it!! Say hello to Cy 👌🏻
Good to see you back! 😻
Appreciate it! Big project in the works is the reason for videos being done slower than usual.
It’s intresting that the Acropolis transitioned from a palatial center to a religious one, do we know anything about this process?
Transition happened during the Dark Ages, which are notoriously difficult to research. Population was all-time low, land mostly abandoned, economic activity minimal, no writing records, not much of substance.
Palatial infrastructure was gone together with the Mycenaean Greece, plus the Athenian palace was relatively small-to-medium anyway. Population of Athens became much lower than during Mycenaean era, it was rather a small settlement on the acropolis, utilizing on the old and decaying Mycenaean age infrastructure. Slowly, over several centuries Athens started to prosper again. They turned the old megaron site (which served as a religious site anyway) into a temple and went from there.
As I understood it - they still had a temple for Athena at the acropolis (probably small at the beginning) and the altar as well, also they still cherished that well of salt water (which was given by Poseidon and they still worshipped him there and where Erechtheion was eventually built around), there was a garden near Athena’s Moria as it was gifted to Pandrosus. So it sounds like it was a combination of palace and place of worship from the very beginning 😊
The older cyclopean walls were called Tyrrhenian, while the mycenean walls of Acropolis, which can still be seen in the western side, were called Pelasgian! According to Herodotos, the Pelasgians of Athens built the walls in exchange for some nearby land on mount Hymettus!!!
For some reason I didn't include the Pelasgic wall and Pelasgian settlement on Hymettus for some reason, although I did write it down in my scenario. Will make sure to mention it in the rise of Ionians & next Athenian video.
yes Pelasgians classical myths verifies this yet to day, they are called Greek speakers, how ever they were long faces and long narrow heads . you can see such peoples in greece today,
In the time that these walls were built, the acropolis was probably a fortified center of the city, the later Athenians used the acropolis as a temple to the gods
Once again, another great video!
Thanks Christian!
Great video👍!! Please do one on Enmebaragesi next
Thanks! It will take some hardcore work to get down on Kish!
Great video as always. Covering the role of Athens in the colonization of the islands and Asia Minor could be a good idea for a future video
Thanks. Agreed! That will be the next step when it comes to Athens.
Very interesting video! I actually have started delving into ancient Egypt on my channel since I'm a big ancient history enthusiast. Definitely going to be checking out some of your other content!
Amazing video as always! It would not surprise me if the earthquake and the fissure inspired the myth of Poseidon creating a water source in Athens. After all, he was also a god of earthquakes. I wish the surviving king list went beyond Aktaios, since there is also a legend of an older king, Periphas, and it would be really cool to know how these two were related, if they were at all!
Thanks Odysseus. I was long thinking about working on a huge video that cover all mythological kings of Athens. Perhaps a big project for 2024.
Thanx for the video!
Thanks alps.
Awesome thank you
Greece is the great civilization of Europe and the world!
The site of Troy shows continual warfare destruction for 100 years. The "10 year war" mentioned in Homeric literature could be a storytelling method to condense that century of war into ten years for easier storytelling.
Troy was vassal state of Hittites. If there was a war between Trojans and Myceaneans that would have been written in Hittites clay tablets. Hittites were always written important events in clay tablets.
@@mukan9 Then what is the archeological destruction seen at Troy VI caused by? Not all tablets survive
@gold333 There is a completely burned layer that archaeologists are convinced was destroyed by Sea Peoples from the western Mediterranean.
I was hoping for a bit more detail on Theseus, the first lawgiver of Athens, and his legend. The Labyrinth holds most important cues for those among us trying to match the fragmentary proto-history, legend and archaeological prehistory into a cohesive whole. It was certainly an most important legend for a paysan of mine who also inspired me very much, Federico Krutwig. He was persuaded, well before the time was mature, of the Vasconic connections through Europe and the Mediterranean and wrote a lot, not so much about Theseus as such but about the Labyrinth (which he felt was exploring himself) and Ariadne's thread (where thread = mythos = myth, a most important cue again).
Theseus is after all not just famous for slaying the Minotaur but for actually being able to exit the Labyrinth (the confusion of the obscure past) with the help of mythos (the thread of oral history in an obvious homonimy). In the terms of a moder satyrical reintrepretation: if the bull-slaying hero does not know how to use the thread, he will die in the Labyrinth, never to see light again, that's why Ariadne is such an important figure (probably again a manifestation of the ancestral supreme Goddess Gaia). He's also infamous for ditching Ariadne in the Cyclades (highly symbolic) after her decisive help and thus (allegorically) losing the associated wisdom. Luckily for us she was rescued by Dyonisos, or so they say.
In terms material, Athens definitely established extensive commercial relations with Crete in any case, and that's another key issue that surely the Thesean legend reflects.
In the future I will do a separate video called Mythology of Athens. It will cover everybody, from Cecrops to Codrus!
@@WanaxTV - looking forward to it. Good job anyhow.
Your Channel is very rewarding to watch, thank you for great videos
The best and most objective non-Geeek website about Ancient Greece.
Superb.
Appreciate it Alexander.
Thank you! This is fantastic ❤
This is great content 👍
Alot more was there . shame u cant find much on tholos tombs of attica was a few cities there back then plus dragon houses.
history is mind-blowing.. even moreso when we know 'what we don't know' or rather, in view of the lens that history has been fractured through :) ruling cultures view more oft than not
The ancient account I read, said Attica remained in Achaean hands, because the King of Athens challenged the Dorian leader to a duel. The Dorians could not breach the Acropolis defences and the Athenians had enough grain, dried meat and fruit there, to last for years. Plus they had a permanent water cistern. The Dorian leader didn't want to engage in a long siege, so he accepted the challenge. They took an oath, that the winner would keep Attica. The Athenian king killed the Dorian leader and retained Attica.
Video about Suppiluliuma
Saving it for the Hittite series! Beginning to work on it as soon as the Akkadian series is done!
I once read that the name of the city it is a plural proper noun, and that it took its name from a local priesthood composed only by priestesses known as the Athanai, which later gave the name to the city as Athens.
Actually the oldest version was probably "Athene" before it assumed the plural form "Athenai".
@@WanaxTV
Nice! Tho I'm wondering if this points out to a local non-greek origin for the name of the goddess and the city? Since I haven't found a proper meaning behind the names of Athena (old: Athāna).
@@mercianthane2503 I read different theories, including a possibility of a non-Greek origin. Another possibility is that the city name Athene actually predates goddess Athena. No conclusive evidence either way.
@@WanaxTV I see, I see. It is quite difficult to compare Athena to any other IE goddess. No match so far from a mythological perspective, not even Minerva herself.
It is not unusual to call the city in plural, same happening at thiva (as thibes like the Egyptian one) and in other city's. and it refers to every district capital of the different tribes living at the same area. Later on those districts become "dimos" ( which comes the word democracy) and unite at one central comant at the Athens we know now
While Athens would came out of the dark ages as a strong powerfull citystate. Mycenae would newer become a major citystate in Greece again . The city was still poulated , but only a shadow of former self. A temple to Hera was on mycenae 's acropolis in archaic times . And Mycenae joined the the other greek citystates against persians. Mycenaean soldiers fought at both Thermopylae(with king Leonidas ) and Plataea during persian wars . After the greek victory . Mycenae's end would come very fast . In 468 bce Mycenae and Argos went to with each other . A war Mycenae lost . The city was burned down, the population moved/expelled to Argos and the walls/fortifications razed to the ground . And Mycenae became a ghost town ...
Was going to reply to your comment about History Time but can't find it. Stay tuned! 😎
@@WanaxTV hallo from Denmark Looking foreword to it. But I must confess. That its my fault. That you suddenly are doing things with history time . I sent Pete a couple of your videoes a few months ago . Among them "why the hittittes didnt try to conquer Greece . So I am guilty part there . Me and pete have known each other for a few years . I commented on one viking age videoes back in 2018/19. And from there , we have talking history ever since . Mostly over messenger ... So some times he recives stuff, I look at in here . And a few your videoes made its way to him because of that.
@@madsdahlc Thank you for sharing the videos and spreading good word about the channel! I really appreciate it! We recently hit 10k subscribers and there will be some awards for supporters soon. You can contact me on email (wanaxtv@gmail.com) or messenger for any ideas or suggestions about the future content. Thanks!
So it can be said that the Ionians were true descendants of the Myceneans as there was a cultural and blood continuity since the Bronze age into the Iron age. I always find fascinating how classical greece related itself to it's ancient past specially how the Spartans know very well that they were foreigners and that the Helots were the ones to inhabited the land long before the spartacids arrival. Certainly no one will argue that the Spartans were greeks but to which point the Dorians were a distinctive people to the rest of greece?
Interesting take.
I'd say to the same degree that Ionians or Aeolians. Let's not forget that during the Mycenaean times, regions such as Doris, Phokis, Lokris, Aetolia etc were still a part of the Mycenaean Greece, and thus were themselves by extension Mycenaean/Achaean.
So, people that eventually began identifying as Dorians, Ionians and Aeolians were all "Achaean" to a degree during the Bronze Age, and all trace their origins from the Mycenaeans.
@@WanaxTV Arent Achaens different then Hellenes?Also, in one of your earlier videos I saw a comment tracing bronze age greece being closer to balcan/slavic culture and that hellenes, once migrated, "stole" the said culture.
@@tsukun16 Achaeans were one of the Hellenic tribes. However, in Bronze Age, term "Hellenes" wasn't apparently used yet, and from what we know (Homer + Hittite sources) Mycenaean Greeks were called Achaeans in general (after their most dominant tribe of the time), so that the term was kind of similar to "Hellenes" in a sense that it referred to Greeks.
Later, of course, by Archaic and Classical periods "Hellenes" emerged as a dominant term applied to all Greeks, and term "Achaeans" was significantly reduced.
@@tsukun16slavs didnt come that far south until the fall of rome. they were mainly in the forrest steppes of ukraine russia at that time.
the balkans at that time were full of illyrians and later celts
@@WanaxTV in Homer Hellas is a region of Phthia that belongs to the kingdom of Achilles
Homer once used the name "PANHELLENES"
"The Locrus were ruled by swift Aias son of Oilea,
shorter, not as tall as Aias the son of Telamon,
but much smaller. He was short and wore a linen breastplate,
but in the pole vault he surpassed all the Panhellenic and Achaeans.,, Iliad (B-530)
. "Thirty deep ships followed with them. / And now, those who dwelt in Pelasgian Argos, / and those who lived in Alos and Alope, and in Trachina, / and those who had Phthia and with Hellas beautiful women / and were called Myrmidons and Hellenes and Achaeans, / they they had fifty ships, and their captain was Achilles.'
(Iliad-B-683)
,,Many Achaean girls are in Phthia and in Hellas ,,
"That's why, my child, I wouldn't want to be separated from you,
even if the god still told me to scratch from my body
old age, and young as I once was, as then
that in Hellas renounced the oriogynaikousa,,
(Iliad-I-444)
nice byzantine background at 9:30
We love Athens so much, our daughter's middle name is Athena.
Does anything remain of Mycenaean era Athens?
Cyclopean style wall of the Mycenaean era. It was called the Pelasgic wall.
@@WanaxTV thank you
Greek cypriots are decendants of mycenians
Oh no! 😮 not the late Bronze Age collapse again 😮 I don’t know about these Dorian cats
❤
Finally, I reconstruct the Greek LBA collapse as follows:
· c. 1180-75 the Greeks (Danaoi, Athens included) went on rampage against Asia, first against Troy, then (gathering all the "sea peoples", a diverse array of unrelated seafaring nations, most of them from the Aegean region) against everything related to the Hittites (who were probably destroyed by the Phrygians) and then tried to invade Egypt twice (once in the Levant, then directly against Egypt proper) but failing. This is the time of the Hellenization of Cyprus and probably a settlement in the Palestinian coast producing the Biblical tribe of Dan. Unlike what some claim, quite shallowly, in this time Mycenaean Greece was still fine and dandy and arguably at the apogee of its power.
· c. 1130 was the time of the Dorian invasion (from Doris and Phtiotis primarily, a frontier area vs Pelasgian Thessaly, surely core of the so-called Western dialects, incl. Dorian) and the collapse of the palaces (but not yet the Bronze Age Greek civilization we call "Myceanaean"). This was largely a dynastic conflict although it did have some ethno-linguistic impact... but internally within the Greek ethno-sphere.
· c. 1070 however was the utter destruction of all cities in Greece save Athens and also when the Berbers (Meswesh = Amazigh) conquered Lower Egypt, inaugurating the Greek Dark Age. To my eyes, the memory of this episode is only retained in Plato's narration of Atlantis and their war with the nations of "the inner gulf" (Eastern Mediterranean), in which they were defeated precisely by Athens.
Re. this last and ultimate LBA collapse, I strongly suspect that Atlantis was the other Iberian civilization, the only one still standing c. 1100 BCE, located essentially in the Lisbon Peninsula (whose geography matches very well Plato's description of Atlantis "Island") and that is known to prehistorians as Culture of Vila Nova de São Pedro (VNSP for short) and had as largest settlement (still barely excavated) the Castro do Zambujal, located on a hill just south of modern Torres Vedras, linked by a navigable "marine branch" (Plato's canal, same length of c. 10 km = 50 stadia) to the aptly named Atlantic Ocean, which was silted c. 1100 BCE in what must have been a terrible tsunami (compare with the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, these tsunamis seem to happen every few thousand years, there are older geological records also in SW Spain). The VNSP civilization also seems to share many other features with Plato's Atlantis, namely: it may have got exactly ten kings (judging on hypogee tombs), it probably practiced bullfighting ("ritual hunt of the bull" per Plato) already, judging not just on the stubbornness of the bloody tradition in Iberia and Southern France but also on the rock art, in which the older stag iconography is replaced by a bull one, they were a very old civilization (from the Copper Age, no discontinuities other than adoption of Bell Beaker very early and being pivotal to it), they had access to vast mineral resources in Western Iberia, notably the very important tin mines of the NW but also the "Tartessian" silver and copper mines of the SW (Tartessos as such is from the Iron Age however, filling in the void of the Iberian LBA collapse), their cultural (and thus maybe political) influence matches very well the area described by Plato, incl. Libya (NW Africa, Tamazgha) and Tyrsenia (Italy), etc. The only question is whether they were as powerful as to lead a coalition of Western (Vasconic and Berber) "sea peoples" against the Eastern Mediterranean more famous civilizations... but I go with it because all the rest matches the description all too well and we have no alternative explaination of what happened c. 1070 BCE. More research is needed anyhow, especially I'd love to see more research on the hill where IMO Atlantis once stood.
Note: initially when I joined the dots of all this I thought that "Athens" in the Platonic narration meant "the Greeks" but later I learned more and more about LBA and Dark Age Athens and realized that it was actually Athens the city state which, seemingly, single-handedly defeated the devastating Atlantean invasion.
You have completely forgotten Sardinia and all its Nuragic Civilization, with pottery scattered all over the Aegean Sea, the Shardana (Sherden) who were at the head of the coalition of Sea Peoples, island "with veins of Silver," the "warriors from the islands of the Great Green, and whom no one has ever defeated" (Rameses III). The Great Green was the western Mediterranean. The horned warriors are the same as the Sardinian Nuragic bronzes, as well as the triangular arsenic copper swords found in Sardinia. You have fallen behind in the most recent studies. They have even found a Shardan nuragic citadel in northern Israel, which confirms what Rameses III wrote, of a Shardan contingent commanding the Egyptian Province in northern Israel.
@@askallois - If I have not mentioned Sardinia it was because it was a YT comment and not an old-school essay on the matter. Sardinia was no doubt very important in all the events leading to the LBA collapse. However you seem to imagine that they had a leading role and I beg to disagree on that matter.
The Sherden (Nuraghic Sardinians) were only leaders of themselves in the first Sea Peoples invasion of c. 1280 BCE. They were the only ones mentioned by the Egyptians and it seems clear that they were afterwards co-opted as "Varangian Guard" of sorts by the pharaohs, being allegedly established in Djeny (Canaan) at a fortress that centuries later the Hebrews would destroy (per the Bible at least). They clearly traded all across the Mediterranean (tin from NW Iberia, copper from Sinai, etc.) and they should have been also present to some extent in SE Iberia, where the "motillas" follow the construction patterns of the nuraghe (but are culturally local, ethnic Iberian, otherwise).
They may have also played a role in the, always overlooked, LBA-EIA Italian wars, which began c. 1300 BCE with the Celto-Italic (Urnfields) invasions and probably culminated c. 900 BCE when other "sea peoples" (Teresh = Tyrsenian and Shekelesh = Sicels) migrated there, maybe in the context of wars with the Indoeuropeans. AFAIK, Sardinia shows at that time increase on mainland Italian immigration, probably refugees from those wars (while Italy as such shows major demographic changes in the opposite direction). The exact events are obscure of course.
I don't think however that they lead any of the more famous "Sea Peoples" (or later unrecorded) waves:
1. The c. 1208 BCE invasion was clearly led by the Hittites and the Sherden were one of several peoples recruited for the war.
2. The c. 1178 invasion did not include the Sherden and was lead by the Greek (Denesh).
3. The c. 1175 invasion did include the Sherden but was surely led by the Greeks again (this is probably when Ulysses got stuck in Egypt as prisoner, per "the Cretan lie", which is the only credible part of the Odyssey).
4. Obviously the Sherden should not be part of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponese c. 1130 BCE (palaces' abandonment).
5. If, as I believe, there was a c. 1070 BCE Atlantean invasion, the Sherden, as Vasconic and Megalithic nation, should be implicated, as would be the Weshesh (Ausones IMO), and the Meswesh (Amazigh or Berbers). But the whole core of the story is that there was an even more distant civilization "beyond the pillars" (IMO VNSP culture of Portugal) who were the leaders of that war.
On the Kekrops or foundational phase:
1. Kekrops is almost identical to kyplops = cyclops, what is reinforced by "born from the land", a trait shared by the giants (who probably represent pre-Indoeuropean peoples of Vasconic type, while the titans represent those of Pelasgo-Tyrsenian type, even if sometimes the categories are confused as happens with Prometheus).
2. If, as I suspect, Athenai is ultimately a Vasconic word this would reinforce tha notion of Kekrops being either a pre-Indoeuropean monarch or, more probably, a Danaan conqueror who catered to the natives more than usual. Other such words seem IMO to exist in Greek such as oikos = etxe (house, home) or oxi = ez (no), as well as the more obvious Gaia = gaia (the matter and the potential), none of them with Indoeuropean roots in any case. Athenai could be from aitz = rock + -en(a) = superlative ("the most") or maybe from ate = door, gate (probably used for ports in old time).
In any case, to my eyes Athena looks like a non-Indoeuropean deity and has parallels, more clearly in the owl "totem" across pre-IE Mediterranean, especially in Southern Iberia, where very similar owl-eyed icons are found all around in that period and earlier in the Copper Age, also associated with goddess figurines not too dissimilar to those of the Cyclades, and seems also associated to mountains and rocks, particularly in Los Millares civilization, whose river is still called Andarach, which transliterates seamlessly into modern Basque as "Andere aitz" = rock of the Lady.
Poseidon on the other hand probably represents better the Indoeuropean Greek (Danaoi) invaders, suggesting an initial conflict between the two peoples which was resolved by peace and agreement of some sort but under Indoeuropean (Greek) hegemony anyhow.
To me personally, Dionysius' viewpoint always seemed more rational than Herodotus/Thucydides when it came to the Pelasgo-Tyrsenian theory.
@@WanaxTV - Not sure which is "Dionysos viewpoint" re. the Pelasgo-Tyrsenians, really. AFAIK the whole god is surrounded in obscurity, possibly being a nickname for a pre-Indoeuropean deity (Nysa's God is the most common interpretation of his name) and is often associated with the Eleusian mysteries (which seemingly involved a long trance induced by the precursor of LSD, LSA, directly found in a cereal fungus). The core mythology being that of his trip to the Netherlworld to rescue his mum in exchange for a myrth branch (not sure of the symbolism but comparable to Demeter's, Herakles' and even Jesus' "defeat of death" legends, and thus deeply ingrained in the Greek or Aegean belief system quite apparently).
In any case the rescuing of Ariadne part I interpret as such: that jerk of Theseus didn't care but "we, the people" do care.
@@LuisAldamiz Dionysius of Halicarnassus
@@ntonisa6636 - No, we're talking about the god (at the very least I am). Per the legend, after Theseus ditched Ariadne in an island, Dyonisos just happened to go by with all his court and married her.
This may link to a pre-Indoeuropean tradition, as in Etruscan iconography Ariadne also appears as consort of Fufluns, the Etruscan version of Dyonisos (but it may be a Greek influence as well). In any case there are many theories that make Ariadne a pre-Indoeuropean goddess of Crete, mistress of the ritual space of the tauromachy, which the Greeks intepreted as Labyrinth (name that has more to do with the labrys or ritual double axes of Cretan culture than with our Greek-modified version that makes it appear as a maze).
@@LuisAldamiz I think Wanax TV was referring to historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus' viewpoint regarding the Pelasgian origins.
It’s pronounced epitome
Encyclopedia Britannica 1988 states that Mycenae was in ruins at the time of the Trojan wars. No one was home,
Mycenaean palace faced destruction/heavy damage at around the same time Troy was destroyed (probably slightly later), but continued to be inhabited for almost 100 years after Troy was gone.
😁😁😁😁
Mycenae athens?
I always thought only sparta and megara that famous at that time
يتكلم عن الفتره التي سبقت اسبرطه واثينا
First
Albanians are decendants of mars😂😂😂😂
It is not Anatolia ! Is minor Asia