The Mycenaeans

Question: Where did the Mycenaeans

come from?

Answer: They came from the

grasslands of southern Russia around 2000 B.C.E

Essential Question – What was life like for the Mycenaean's?

Question: What did the Mycenaeans build at the top of hills?

The Mycenaeans’ kings built fortress-palaces on hilltops.

In times of danger or attack, the people in the villages outside the palace walls took shelter within the palace:

The chief feature of the palace is known as the Megaron, or a square room with a fireplace in the center.

Who worked the land on the estates?

Land was divided into estates that were farmed either by enslaved people or by tenants, or people who live on and work another person’s land.

What is the difference between a tenant and a slave? While slaves are captured

and forced to work the land, a tenant is like a renter working someone’s else's land.

Question: Who did the Mycenaeans

adopt their ship building skills from?

Answer: The Minoans.

The Mycenaeans began to imitate Minoan gold and bronze work as well.

What did the Mycenaeans use olives for?

The Mycenaeans also began to grow olives. They made presses to squeeze oil from the olives. They used the olives:

As oil for cooking, As fuel for lamps, To rub on their bodies.

Question: Who wrote about the Trojan

war?

Answer: Homer

Question What were the names of the

two poems Homer wrote?

Answer: The Iliad, Odyssey

Question Why was the Trojan war

fought?

Answer Over a woman, Helen

According to Homer’s account in the Iliad, the Trojan War was fought over a woman. The king of Troy had a son named Paris, who fell in love with Helen. When Paris took Helen to Troy her husband (Meneleus) sailed his army to Troy

Describe the events of the Trojan war:

After ten years of fighting, the Mycenaeans still had not taken Troy. Odysseus had the soldiers build a huge, hollow wooden horse. The best soldiers hid inside the horse, while the rest boarded their ships pretended and sailed away.

The Trojans saw the ships leave and thought they had won the war. The Trojans tied ropes to the wooden horse and pulled it into the city. When they fell asleep, the Mycenaean soldiers hidden inside came out and opened the city gates

Describe the events of the Trojan war continued:

Question: Why was the period after the Trojan war known as “a dark age”?

Answer: The Mycenaeans did not return to peaceful ways after crushing

Troy. Instead, a series of civil wars, or wars between opposing groups of citizens broke out.

Soon after, a people called Dorians entered Greece and conquered the Myceanaeans. Thousands of Myceanaeans fled the Greek mainland and settled on Aegean islands on the west shore of Asia Minor. These settlements later became known as Ionia.

As a result of civil wars and the Dorian invasion, the Aegean World entered a dark age.

The Dark age lasted until 800 B.C.E1. The people had to start over2. They became herders and farmers3. They stop keeping written records4. Local leaders began to rule small areas5. The borders were fixed and the people of the small communities

began calling themselves Hellens or Greeks.