The earliest civilization in Europe appeared on the coasts and islands of the Aegean Sea. This body of water is a branch of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bounded by the Greek mainland on the west, Asia Minor (now Turkey) on the east, and the island of Crete on the south. Here, while the rest of Europe was still in the Stone Age, the Minoan-Mycenaean peoples achieved a highly organized Bronze Age culture.

Two different civilizations flourished in this region from about 3000 BC to 1000 BC. The earliest is known as Minoan, because its center at Knossos (also spelled Cnossus) on the island of Crete was the legendary home of King Minos, who was (according to mythology) the son of the god Zeus and Europa, a Phoenician princess. The later culture is called Mycenaean, after Mycenae, a city on the Greek peninsula named the Peloponnesus. Mycenae was the capital of the region ruled by King Agamemnon, the Achaean leader in the Trojan War

The Mycenaeans, or Achaeans, had invaded the Greek mainland between 1900 BC and 1600 BC, and the term Achaeans was sometimes used to refer to all Greeks of this period. The center of their culture was Mycenae, which flourished from about 1500 to 1100 BC. Before 1400 BC the Mycenaeans conquered the Minoans. The war against Troy took place in the 13th or early 12th century BC

The Minoan Civilization

The origin of the Minoans is unknown, but by 1600 BC they dominated the Aegean region. They lived on Crete from about 2500 BC to 1400 BC, when they were conquered by Mycenaeans from the Greek mainland. Their prosperity depended upon seafaring and trade, especially with the Middle East and with Egypt.

In 1900 the British archaeologist Arthur Evans began excavations at Knossos that eventually revealed a great palace that covered 5.5 acres (2.2 hectares). There were no surrounding walls at Knossos, as in the Mycenaean cities. The palace and the city had been protected by a powerful navy. Evans found storerooms with huge oil jars still in place, elaborate bathrooms, ventilation and drainage systems, and waste disposal chutes. The pottery was as fine as porcelain. Paintings on walls and pottery showed the dress of the women, with puffed sleeves and flounced skirts. The palace of Knossos was destroyed during the 14th century BC.

The Minoans worshiped a mother goddess, whose symbol was the double-bladed ax, called a labrys. The name of the symbol and the maze of rooms in the palace recall the story of the labyrinth. According to Greek mythology, Daedalus built a labyrinth for Minos to house the man-eating Minotaur, half man and half bull. Painted on the palace walls are pictures of acrobats vaulting over the backs of bulls. This sport may have given rise to the myth. After the Greeks conquered the Minoans they absorbed such stories into their mythology.

Mycenae and Other Achaean Cities

In 1876 Heinrich Schliemann began excavating Mycenae. Still visible today is the acropolis, with its broken stone walls and Lion Gate. Within the walls Schliemann uncovered the graves of bodies covered with gold masks, breastplates, armbands, and girdles. In the graves of the women were golden diadems, golden laurel leaves, and exquisite ornaments shaped like animals, flowers, butterflies, and cuttlefish.

Schliemann thought he had found the burial place of Agamemnon and his followers. Later study proved the bodies belonged to a period 400 years earlier than the Trojan War. Rulers of another dynasty were buried outside the walls in strange beehive tombs.

Other great cities of the same period were Pylos, the legendary capital of King Nestor, and Tiryns. It is not known to what extent Mycenae controlled other centers of the Achaean civilization. It is known that Mycenaean trade extended to Sicily, Egypt, Palestine, Troy, Cyprus, and Macedonia.

Scholars once believed that the Mycenaeans had no written language. The evidences of culture in their massive walled cities, their fine goldwork, pottery, and vases were attributed to the influence of the Minoans, who established settlements on the mainland in about 1600 BC.

In 1952 great light was thrown on the Mycenaean civilization by the deciphering of an ancient writing on clay tablets, known as Linear Script B. Michael Ventris, a young English architect, accomplished the task on which scholars had labored for 50 years. These tablets were among some 2,000 uncovered at Knossos on Crete by Evans. With them were tablets in an older writing, which Evans called Linear Script A, and some still older hieroglyphics. Linear Scripts A and B are forms of writing in which symbols are used to represent syllables. In 1939 about 600 more tablets 0n Linear Script B were found at Pylos, on the Greek mainland, and in 1952 and 1953 some were discovered at Mycenae.

Ventris found that Linear Script B is an archaic Greek dialect. It is the oldest Indo-European system of writing yet discovered. The language is at a stage 700 years older than the earliest classical Greek. The tablets appeared at Knossos because the Mycenaeans had earlier conquered the Minoans.

The tablets are only inventories of palace storerooms and arsenals; however, they reveal a great deal about the Mycenaeans. They engaged in agriculture, industry, commerce, and war. A king headed the society. Under him was a "leader of the people," perhaps an army commander. There were landowners, tenant farmers, servants and slaves, priests and priestesses. There were many trades and professions. The Mycenaeans worshiped Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Artemis, and Athena and the other gods of Mount Olympus.

The language of Linear Script A has not yet been deciphered. It was in use on Crete from about 1700 BC to 1600 BC as a replacement for an earlier hieroglyphic writing system--possibly adopted from the Egyptians

In about 1100 BC Greece was overrun by an invasion of barbaric tribes from the north. The Dorians and, later, the Ionians occupied the areas where the Minoan-Mycenaean cultures had flourished. Greece was not to be so rich and powerful again until the golden age of Athens under Pericles in the 5th century BC.