Scholars often divide the history of ancient Greece into six relatively distinct periods, but only five of them belong to the history of those ethnically Greek.

Minoan, Helladic and Cycladic

Though often included in Greek history, the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete and its contemporaries – the Helladic civilisation of mainland Greece and the Cycladic civilisation of the Cyclades – were not truly Greek civilisations. These early and middle Bronze Age peoples were part of a population that existed before the migration of Indo-Europeans into the area. Ethnically, there is no continuation between these peoples and the Greeks.

Reconstructed Minoan fresco

That is not to say Minoan, Helladic and Cycladic civilisations should be written out of Greek history entirely! These civilisations were very influential on what would become Greek culture. Some would argue that Greek speaking peoples only began to flourish and exhibit significant regional impact under this influence, in particular that of Minoan culture.

Elements of Minoan history and religion are also present in later Greek mythology, though how close to historical truth these accounts are is hard to say.

Mycenaean

The Mycenean civilisation is so named after the archaeological site of Mycenae, though many other sites, such as Thebes and Athens, were also part of the Mycenaean culture. So far as the evidence allows us to determine these things, these peoples were the first to speak a language identifiable as Greek. The evidence that I speak of are palace inventory lists written in an early form of Greek using an alphabet adapted from the non-Greek Minoan culture.

Mycenaean culture flourished roughly between 1600 and 1100 BCE. At its birth, Minoan culture was one of the most influential in the region and it clearly influenced Mycenaean art and architecture. As a result, Mycenaean culture is often compared and contrasted with the Minoans’.

Their warlike nature, for example, is often touted with reference to the Mycenaeans’ tendency to build closed and defensible palaces and legends of Mycenaean conquest, such as the Trojan war. The Minoans, by contrast, left their palaces open for attack and are known to have enjoyed an expansive international trading network. The simple conclusion is that Minoans influenced peacefully by trade and the Mycenaeans influenced by conquest.

Mycenaean funerary mask, traditionally placed over the face of the buried corpse.

While that is naturally an all too simplistic model of history, there is some truth to it. Mycenaean civilisation was dominated by a warrior aristocracy and they most certainly conquered or subdued other peoples, including the Minoans. That is not to say that Mycenaean culture bred inefficient traders. Mycenaean goods have been found as far away as in Britain.

The Dark Ages

During a period of around 1200 to 1050 BCE, all Mycenaean palaces were either abandoned or destroyed. No one knows why; we are completely in the dark about what happened, which is also how historians have named the period.

The hows are fairly certain: local conflict, broken trade routes due to conflict elsewhere, population movements and significant population reduction all contributed to this period of no major architecture, no written language, de-urbanisation, isolation from the international markets, and destroyed infrastructure.

The whys are much less certain. There are theories about natural disasters, pandemics, the invasion or migration of a people speaking another dialect of Greek called Doric, and the war and plunder rampage of a band of eastern warrior pirates known only as the Sea People. No one theory quite fits with the archaeological record.

Economic stability only really returned in the 8th century BCE. At that time, the Greeks were adapting a new alphabet for themselves out of the Phoenician writing system.

Archaic

Archaic sculpture

With the Archaic Age, circa 750 to 500 BCE, came reurbanisation and population growth. It was also an age of new grand architecture and art under the influence of oriental trends. The marble sculptures we have come to associate with ancient Greece have their beginnings in this period.

It was a period of renewed social and political organisation. Personal kingdoms were for most part replaced by the polis, a city-state system, though some poleis, like Sparta, retained kings as their heads of state. Greek warfare also developed in this period into the orderly phalanx of later eras.

Greek civilisation was booming! To make trade more efficient, the Greeks set up permanent trading ports and towns in foreign lands as far away as Spain. It didn’t take long before true Greek colony states started cropping up all across the Mediterranean.

Classical

The Classical Era is roughly encompassed by the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BCE and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

The Parthenon is probably the best known piece of Classical architecture

It is the age we most associate with ancient Greece. It the the era of Athenian democracy, of philosophers, of scientists, of historians, and of great temples and exquisitely life-like art. But, it is also the era of long wars and strife. This period saw, amongst other conflicts, saw a 27 year long conflict between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies, as well as 49 years of volatile relations with the Persians.

Hellenistic

Then came a Macedonian king by the name of Alexander and he, with some help from his father before him, unified Greece and avenged his people by conquering the vast Persian Empire. But Alexander suddenly died, and this vast Empire he had created was split up between his generals who proclaimed themselves as kings.

This was the beginning of an entirely new era in Greek history. Now, you could live in Italy or in in Afghanistan and still be Greek. This vast empire – really a collection of smaller empires with their own kings – allowed for great movement of both goods and people. Leaving one’s home town to seek fortune abroad became a real option. People there would be speaking Greek too, the city structure would be the same and the buildings would be the same. The Hellenistic period was the era of the great library of Alexandria.

This, of course, is an idealistic view of the Hellenistic era. Subdued native cultures, the slavery that often followed, and even the more benign cultural interactions are overlooked. Nothing is ever quite this simple, but for Greek monoculture it was a golden age.

The end of independent Greece

It all came to an end of sorts in 146 BCE, when the Romans conquered the Greek peninsula. Though, not quite. While Greece itself was under Roman political control kingdoms ruled by Greeks, such as Egypt, remained independent longer. Greek Syria did not become Roman until 63 BCE and Egypt remained independent until, while in conflict with Rome, its Greek queen Cleopatra VII killed herself in 30 BCE. Greece was not independent again until after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101.