Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea. There are three distinct but communicating and interacting geographic regions covered by this term: Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland. Crete is associated with the Minoan civilization from the Early Bronze Age. The Cycladic civilization converges with the mainland during the Early Helladic ("Minyan") period and with Crete in the Middle Minoan period. From (Late Helladic, Late Minoan), the Greek Mycenaean civilization spreads to Crete, probably by military conquest. The earlier Aegean farming populations of Neolithic Greece brought agriculture westward into Europe before 5000 BC.
Early European Farmers ("EEFs")
Around 5,000 BC, peoples descending from neolithic migrant populations reached the northern European plain in modern-day France and Germany; they reached Britain some 1000 years later.Paul Rincon, Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders. BBC News, April 16, 2019
Once in the Balkans, the Aegean EEFs appear to have divided into two wings: one which expanded further north into Europe along the Danube (Linear Pottery culture), and another which headed west along the Mediterranean (Cardial Ware) into the Iberian Peninsula. Descendants of this latter group eventually migrated into Britain.Josh Davis (April 2019), "Neolithic Britain: where did the first farmers come from?" The Natural History Museum, London Previously, these areas were populated by Western Hunter-Gatherer represented by the Cheddar Man.
The Chalcolithic (Copper Age) began in Europe around 5500 BC. Chalcolithic Europeans began to erect megaliths in this period.
Periodization
Mainland
Early Helladic (EH): 3200/3100–2050/2001 BC Middle Helladic (MH): 2000/1900–1550 BC Late Helladic (LH): 1550–1050 BC
Crete
Early Minoan (EM): 3200–2160 BC Middle Minoan (MM): 2160–1600 BC Late Minoan (LM): 1600–1100 BC
Cyclades
Early Cycladic (EC): 3300–2000 BC Kastri (EH II–EH III): –2100 BC Convergence with MM from ca. 2000 BC
Commerce Commerce was practiced to some extent in very early times, as is shown by the distribution of Melian obsidian over all the Aegean area. Cretan vessels appeared to be exported to Melos, Egypt, and the Greek mainland. In particular, Melian vases, eventually, found their way to Crete. After 1600 BC, there was commerce with Egypt, and Aegean goods found their way to all coasts of the Mediterranean. No traces of currency have come to light, excluding certain axeheads. These axeheads were too small for practical use. Standard weights have been found, as well as representations of ingots. The Aegean written documents have not yet been proven (by being found outside the area) to be epistolary (letter writing) correspondence with other countries. Representations of ships are not common, but several have been observed on Aegean gems, gem-sealings, frying pans, and vases. These vases feature ships of low free-board, with masts and oars. Familiarity with the sea is proved by the free use of marine motifs in decoration. The most detailed illustrations are to be found on the 'ship fresco' at Akrotiri on the island of Thera (Santorini) preserved by the ash fall from the volcanic eruption which destroyed the town there.
Discoveries, later in the 20th century, of sunken trading vessels such as those at Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya off the south coast of Turkey have brought forth an enormous amount of new information about that culture.
Evidence For details of monumental evidence the articles on Crete, Mycenae, Tiryns, Troad, Cyprus, etc., must be consulted. The most representative site explored up to now is Knossos (see Crete) which has yielded not only the most various but the most continuous evidence from the Neolithic age to the twilight of classical civilization. Next in importance come Hissarlik, Mycenae, Phaestus, Hagia Triada, Tiryns, Phylakope, Palaikastro and Gournia.
Internal evidence
Structures: Ruins of palaces, palatial villas, houses, built dome- or cist-graves and fortifications (Aegean islands, Greek mainland and northwestern Anatolia), but not distinct temples; small shrines, however, and temene (religious enclosures, remains of one of which were probably found at Petsofa near Palaikastro by J. L. Myres in 1904) are represented on intaglios and frescoes. From the sources and from inlay-work we have also representations of palaces and houses. Structural decoration: Architectural features, such as columns, friezes and various mouldings; mural decoration, such as fresco-paintings, coloured reliefs and mosaic inlay. Roof tiles were also occasionally employed, as at early Helladic Lerna and Akovitika,Joseph W. Shaw, The Early Helladic II Corridor House: Development and Form, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 91, No. 1. (Jan. 1987), pp. 59–79 (72). and later in the Mycenaean towns of Gla and Midea.Ione Mylonas Shear, "Excavations on the Acropolis of Midea: Results of the Greek-Swedish Excavations under the Direction of Katie Demakopoulou and Paul åström", American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 104, No. 1. (Jan. 2000), pp. 133–134. Furniture: (a) Domestic furniture, such as vessels of all sorts and in many materials, from huge store jars down to tiny unguent pots; culinary and other implements; thrones, seats, tables, etc., these all in stone or plastered terracotta. (b) Sacred furniture, such as models or actual examples of ritual objects; of these we have also numerous pictorial representations. (c) Funerary furniture, for example, coffins in painted terracotta. Art products: for example, plastic objects, carved in stone, or ivory, cast or beaten in metals (gold, silver, copper and bronze), or modelled in clay, faience, paste, etc. Very little trace has yet been found of large free-standing sculpture, but many examples exist of sculptors' smaller work. Vases of many kinds, carved in marble or other stones, cast or beaten in metals or fashioned in clay, the latter in enormous number and variety, richly ornamented with coloured schemes, and sometimes bearing moulded decoration. Examples of painting on stone, opaque and transparent. Engraved objects in great number for example, ring-bezels and gems; and an immense quantity of clay impressions, taken from these. Weapons, tools and implements: In stone, clay, and bronze, and at the last iron, sometimes richly ornamented or inlaid. Numerous representations also of the same. No actual body armour, except such as was ceremonial and buried with the dead, like the gold breastplates in the circle-graves at Mycenae or the full length body armour from Dendra. Articles of personal use: for example, brooches (fibulae), pins, razors, tweezers, often found as dedications to a deity, for example, in the Dictaean Cavern of Crete. No textiles have survived other than impressions in clay. Written documents: for example, clay tablets and discs (so far in Crete only), but nothing of more perishable nature, such as skin, papyrus, etc.; engraved gems and gem impressions; legends written with pigment on pottery (rare); characters incised on stone or pottery. These show a number of systems of script employing either ideograms or syllabograms (see Linear B). Excavated tombs: Of either the pit, chamber or the tholos kind, in which the dead were laid, together with various objects of use and luxury, without cremation, and in either coffins or loculi or simple wrappings. Public works: Such as paved and stepped roadways, bridges, systems of drainage, etc.
External evidence Monuments and records of other contemporary civilizations: for example, representations of alien peoples in Egyptian frescoes; imitation of Aegean fabrics and style in non-Aegean lands; allusions to Mediterranean peoples in Egyptian, Semitic or Babylonian records. Literary traditions of subsequent civilizations: Especially the Hellenic; such as, for example, those embodied in the Homeric poems, the legends concerning Crete, Mycenae, etc.; statements as to the origin of gods, cults and so forth, transmitted to us by Hellenic antiquarians such as Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, etc. Traces of customs, creeds, rituals, etc.: In the Aegean area at a later time, discordant with the civilization in which they were practiced and indicating survival from earlier systems. There are also possible linguistic and even physical survivals to be considered. Mycenae and Tiryns are the two principal sites on which evidence of a prehistoric civilization was remarked long ago by the ancient Greeks.
Discovery The curtain-wall and towers of the Mycenaean citadel, its gate with heraldic lions, and the great "Treasury of Atreus" had borne silent witness for ages before Heinrich Schliemann's time. However, they were regarded as a crude precursor of later Greek culture. It was not until Schliemann's excavations that Mycenaean culture attracted serious scholarly attention.
There had been, however, a good deal of other evidence available before 1876, which, had it been collated and seriously studied, might have discounted the sensation that the discovery of the citadel graves eventually made. For instance, scholars had noted that tributaries appearing in Egyptian art resembled modern Greeks, but were unable to definitely recognize them as such. Nor did the Aegean objects which were lying obscurely in museums in 1870, or thereabouts, provide a sufficient test of the real basis underlying the Hellenic myths of the Argolid, the Troad and Crete, to cause these to be taken seriously. Aegean vases have been exhibited both at Sèvres and Neuchatel since about 1840, the provenance (i.e. source or origin) being in the one case Phylakope in Melos, in the other Cephalonia.
Ludwig Ross, the German archaeologist appointed Curator of the Antiquities of Athens at the time of the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece, by his explorations in the Greek islands from 1835 onwards, called attention to certain early intaglios, since known as Inselsteine; but it was not until 1878 that C. T. Newton demonstrated these to be no strayed Phoenician products. In 1866 primitive structures were discovered on the island of Therasia by quarrymen extracting pozzolana, a siliceous volcanic ash, for the Suez Canal works. When this discovery was followed up in 1870, on the neighbouring Santorini (Thera), by representatives of the French School at Athens, much pottery of a class now known immediately to precede the typical late Aegean ware, and many stone and metal objects, were found. These were dated by the geologist Ferdinand A. Fouqué, somewhat arbitrarily, to 2000 BC, by consideration of the superincumbent eruptive stratum.
Meanwhile, in 1868, tombs at Ialysus in Rhodes had yielded to Alfred Biliotti many painted vases of styles which were called later the third and fourth "Mycenaean"; but these, bought by John Ruskin, and presented to the British Museum, excited less attention than they deserved, being supposed to be of some local fabric of uncertain date. Nor was a connection immediately detected between them and the objects found four years later in a tomb at Menidi in Attica and a rock-cut "bee-hive" grave near the Argive Heraeum.