Scattered Candles in the Night - Civilization during the Greek Dark Age (c. 1100-750 BC)

The Greek Dark Age, spanning roughly from 1100 to 750 BC, marks a mysterious chapter in the history of ancient Greece. Characterized by a sharp decrease in population, the abandonment of the once might Mycenaean palatial centers, disruption of trade networks, the loss of literacy and a steep decline in artistic endeavors, this time period was generally one of economic hardship and political fragmentation. However, amidst the darkness there were pockets of prosperity and social changes that eventually allowed for the rise of powerful Greek city-states and the dawn of Archaic Greek civilization.
Contents:
00:00 Introduction and Context
02:50 What was the Greek Dark Age
08:36 Greece enters the Iron Age
09:59 Greece starts to Recover
11:15 Chiefs and Chiefdoms
15:51 The Geometric Period
17:35 The Greek Alphabet
18:33 Panhellenism
21:53 Thank You and Patrons
Related Videos:
Exploring Mycenaean Greece - Culture, Kingdoms and the Historical Context of the Trojan War
• Exploring Mycenaean Gr...
The Bronze Age in Paradise: The Early Societies of the Cyclades (Early Cycladic Culture)
• The Bronze Age in Para...
The World of Neolithic Greece - The First Seafarers, Traders and Farmers of Prehistoric Greece
• The World of Neolithic...
Sources and Suggested Reading:
Greece in the Making: 1200-479 BC - Robin Osborne
Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times - Thomas R. Martin
A History of Greece: 1300-30 BC - Victor Parker
Ancient Greece: A Political, Social and Cultural History - Edited by Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts
The Complete History of Ancient Greece - Edited by Don Nardo
In Search of the Trojan War - Michael Wood
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#ancienthistory #greece #history

[@gdk7704]

Bro, YOU are like a candle in the night which is social media. In a world where the average attention span is 3 seconds, you come up with elegant and most of all accurate historical content, without any click bait or sensationalism. Keep doing what you're doing Cy, there are many of us who truly appreciate your labour!

[@issaelynuma9001]

pienso lo mismo

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks so much for the feedback, comments like this make my day and motivate me to put out more stuff you all! Will do my best to continue and improve when I can. Thanks so much for watching, really appreciate it!

[@synaestesia-bg3ew]

​@@HistorywithCyYou must love Elton's John's "a candle in the wind"😊

[@aslanlovett4059]

Especially when he got out of his "b.c.e"/"c.e." faze and returned to the light of B.c/ a.d.

[@ahumanperson3649]

Another banger from Cy (I am one nanosecond into the video)

[@jimmyscherwitz5631]

Cymisofilous the Great the 3rd Jr.

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks, hope you enjoyed it!

[@HistorywithCy]

😂

[@charlesg5085]

Nanosecond? Nonsense, that would be you only watched the first frame.

[@richjordan6461]

Whoever the guy was who re-invented a Greek writing system must have been a genuis, a true Greek hero. Like a Galileo or Issac Newton type. And to think...we have no idea who he (or she) was

[@juelbriggs447]

I am absolutely fascinated by the Minoan, Aegean, Greek and Levant Bronze Age and the so called "Dark Age" that came after it. The "Sea Peoples", the first adoption and then rapid spread of the alphabet and the increased use of iron. The Ancient Greek and other people's writing down of their "myths" (which up to that time were embellished verbal accounts of Bronze Age history really) flowered eg Homer's Iliad and Odysee, the Old Testament etc. Amazing. I hope that one day someone (or AI) will be able to translate Linear A.

[@andywomack3414]

You must be familiar with the work of Eric Cline. Was the collapse of the Cretan civilization partly due to a lack of structural and ship-building timber? Thera hurt, but did not kill the Minoans. Linear A would be cool. A lot can be learned from goods lists. Who knows? Maybe stories.

[@HistorywithCy]

You and me both. Linear A, the Harappan and other scripts being deciphered would be amazing! I'm hopeful that AI can help, though I think we still need the human element in translation. They have started translating some cuneiform documents with AI and while it does help, it cannot translate, let's say, the human emotions or richness of the language, at least not yet. The few Sumerian and Akkadian AI translations I've read make errors due to not understanding the context (the same signs in both can have very different meanings based on the context) and are rather robotic. Hopefully this can be improved. Anyway thanks so much for watching, really appreciate it and stay tuned for more!

[@richjordan6461]

Have you seen the KZbin videos by Dan Davis? He has this much on this period, and especially a recent video on the Minoans. I was impressed.

[@richjordan6461]

​@andywomack3414 I have a book by Eric Cline I desperately want to read, and yet it has been on my bookshelf 3 years

[@GLeibniz1716]

A really obscure period of antiquity that you illuminate; and out of which classical Greece arose! Well done cy and be safe!

[@WanaxTV]

Great video on one of my favorite topics!

[@HistorywithCy]

Haha knew you'd be interested in this one... I really enjoyed your recent Dorian Invasion video too!

[@vinrusso821]

Not as bad as many thought? I hear this often now, but when you lose 3/4 of your entire population, I would say it was pretty bad. A huge mystery to be sure.

[@user-vm3bo6eq1d]

I think that the loss of population is due to immigration for other places more promising and fertile...Consider that Greece is an 80% mountainous country with small valleys between...

[@cmt6997]

@@user-vm3bo6eq1dand yet the population severely contracted everywhere in the Med and Middle East. If you assume that all of these people who vanished packed up and immigrated elsewhere, we’d have evidence for that. However the only evidence we have implies a massive die off.

[@HistorywithCy]

I think that's a good point...I believe the population decline was rather gradual over a few generations which makes me think that it wasn't necessarily due to violence, disease or famine, more likely lower birthrates, higher infant mortality and emigration abroad. Just my thoughts, thanks for watching!

[@chuckleezodiac24]

palaces gone. monumental architecture gone. population devastated. settlements abandoned. writing gone. trade collapsed. not that bad...

[@noahlogue]

Cys channel is easily my favorite channel on KZbin.

[@HistorywithCy]

I'm honored, thanks so much! More on the way, stay tuned and thanks for watching!

[@mohammedsaysrashid3587]

Really it was remarkable and informative work about the Dark Age of Helen's ( ancient Greek 🇬🇷 civilization) shared by an amazing ( history with Cy) channel.

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it and more on the way, stay tuned and thanks for watching!

[@chm5750]

Hellens is the Greek word for Greeks, to this day modern Greeks use the same word to refer to themselves.

[@JustGrowingUp84]

I love these dives into more obscure periods of history, excellent video Cy!

[@HistorywithCy]

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for watching!

[@Leo_ofRedKeep]

The hypothesis of the "Dorian invasion" comes with the question of what an invasion is. It could be a whole people migrating in and displacing, slaughtering or admixing with the former inhabitants, or it could be an army taking control of the existing structures and replacing the ruling/taxing class while leaving the food producing populace as it was but altering the system that had made former monumental constructions possible. It seems similar to the rule of former parts of the Roman empire by the elite of Germanic tribes. The evolution of the "basileus" function from a civil servant to a king or nobleman fits such a narrative too.

[@user-dg9sr2fe6y]

No ancient Greeks historians never wrote about an "Dorian invasion". Everyone is talking about "comeback". Let's not forget the eruption of the Thira-Santorini volcano and the devastation it caused. The eruption is chronologically synchronous with the destruction of the Mycenaean settlements. We also need geological knowledge and not only archaeological knowledge to understand the disaster. Some left because it was impossible to cultivate and live off the land and returned. The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano gives us an idea of the magnitude of the disaster. The Santorini eruption was three times more powerful.

[@Ave_Echidna]

​@@user-dg9sr2fe6yThe Santorini eruption was 500-600 years before the Greek Dark Ages.

[@user-dg9sr2fe6y]

@@Ave_Echidna Delete the nonsense you wrote. In the future, read more carefully before answering.

[@danielschaeffer1294]

The influence of Homer in modern culture is still felt; even in modern films, which usually contain one of two types of hero; the lone crazed avenger whose best buddy gets it, so he heads off for the final showdown, and the lovable scoundrel who outwits his foes and goes back home to the girl he left behind him.

[@Replicaate]

Damn, I never thought about that. And I'm one of those nerds who reads Iliad or Odyssey at east once a year!

[@nyallcode]

I've always wanted to see a video on this! Great work, your ancestors are surely proud!

[@HistorywithCy]

Thank you, really appreciate the support and glad you enjoyed the video!

[@maykonjunkes6027]

Oi Ciro! Que bom receber a notificação de um vídeo seu! Eu estava com saudades!

[@rodrigomachado5291]

Cirão o Grande da Massa.

[@FilipeCardoso1]

Ele é um génio!

[@HistorywithCy]

Oi cara, tudo bem! Estou feliz que vc recebeu a notificação e gostou do video! Muito obrigado por tudo... valeu!!!

[@HistorywithCy]

@@FilipeCardoso1 Muito obrigado cara, mas não mereço este título. O canal é um sucesso por causa de vocês!

[@HistorywithCy]

@@rodrigomachado5291 Muito obrigado meu amigo, mas eu não mereço este título. O canal é um sucesso por causa de vocês! Valeu!!

[@t.j.payeur5331]

Thank you, Cy. This was great, it's appreciated.

[@HistorywithCy]

Thank you for watching, glad you enjoyed it!

[@joeshmoe8345]

Another excellent post, thanks a bunch for sharing with us Cy Guy!

[@HistorywithCy]

My pleasure, always love sharing new content with you all! Thanks for watching!

[@christinekulper7824]

Thank you, Cy. Very much enjoyed. ❤

[@brettmuir5679]

High praise to you Cy. 400 years on a text book page one digests in a gulp. You help make it real. Your channel is sooooo good. Thank you for all the work you do...I would love to stumble upon you some year hence, somewhere in Anatolia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran...my good man, I stumbled upon you on KZbin. Perhaps one of these days we both will be lost in Armenia. I love this channel :)

[@robertstan2349]

i think it's become fashionable to deny 'dark age' as a concept. i can imagine some future historian after a nuclear holocaust knocks us back into the 15th century claiming there was no true dark age and it wasn't as bad as all that 😋

[@cmt6997]

The idea that we are not necessarily progressing forwards at all times, and that we have actually regressed almost as many times as we’ve progressed, is scary to some people and perceived by some as a threat to social order and stability.

[@konstantinrebrov675]

@@cmt6997 True, in the 21st century the technology has progressed, but the society and morality has actually regressed comparing to the late 19th/early 20th century.

[@catholicconvert2119]

@@konstantinrebrov675massively agreed. Social layers have been stripped out like there’s no tomorrow over the course of the twentieth century and early 21st, to the point there’s almost nothing left

[@Thunderous333]

​@@konstantinrebrov675What makes you say this (I'm waiting for the homophobic, transphobic, and outright racist comment)?

[@konstantinrebrov675]

@@catholicconvert2119 Individualism has created atomization of society, the person VS the government. All social layers have been replaced with beurocracy, government or private owned. There should be families, tribes, villages, regional unions in between the individual and the government. The folk must be owners of schools, hospitals, farms, food facilities, police, construction, utilities. There should be tribal and national owned all facilities, instead of beurocratic, meaning state and private owned. Why in the past architecture used to be so beautiful because they were built by the folk, that's why it's called folk architecture, like traditional Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavian buildings.

[@tafinzer]

Always love your work 🙌🏼

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks, really appreciate it, and thanks for watching!

[@thedeesus4249]

Thank you for your work. I thoroughly appreciate these videos.

[@HistorywithCy]

Glad you like them and thanks for watching!

[@ecurewitz]

Fascinating. Thank you

[@HistorywithCy]

You're welcome!

[@Bulgarian021]

CY I am back to yourchannel. It is just that your work is really nice. And meaningful. And not biased

[@billsmart2532]

Well told, a few brilliant extrapolations, contained in your theory. I need to watch it again.

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks so much, hope you enjoyed it twice as much the second time around haha. Seriously, glad you enjoyed it and stay tuned for more!

[@bajavolvo]

Thanks for posting this

[@HistorywithCy]

You're welcome, thanks for watching!

[@gerardmichaelburnsjr.]

Thank you so much for this video. Not enough is written for the public about the dark age of Greece. I think I have learned something that helps me understand even the collapse itself. Given that only a very small number of people were living in these former cities, where presumably there had been good agricultural land,, and lacking evidence of an extreme change in climate. I'm glad to give more credence to the volcanic eruption idea.

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks so much, glad this was helpful! Yes, it's a fascinating time period for sure. Thanks for watching, really appreciate it!

[@FilipeCardoso1]

És um poço de sabedoria!👏 Andava à anos à espera de deste tema! Obrigado

[@QalOrt]

Great work

[@HistorywithCy]

Glad you liked it and thanks as always for tuning in!

[@QueenMoontime]

Amazing as always Cy

[@HistorywithCy]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for watching!

[@rts0fft0ya16]

Thanks, Cy. You might be my favorite channel on KZbin 👏 👍 You said the dark age probably wasn't as dark as once assumed, but I dunno. I'm sure it was relatively ok after things eventually settled down, but you said the population was reduced by 2/3rds? By Odin's eye patch! If our population was reduced 2/3rds..it would be dark times, indeed. 😮

[@samuelleandro2275]

Reduction of population might be gradual and can indicate that people are having less children instead of more people dying. Does not necessarily mean reduction through violent means. As he said, society produced less food, meaning people were less inclined to try having as many children as they had, let's say 2 generations ago, since they would not be able to sustain such large households.

[@sergiufort9984]

Love your stuff and style🎉😊

[@jonathanenglishteacher2376]

Appreciated. 👍

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks!

[@HamCubes]

Thank you! 🫡🙏

[@HistorywithCy]

You're welcome, thanks for watching!

[@RemusKingOfRome]

Excellent.

[@draganjagodic4056]

Glad to have discovered this channel. Subscribed.

[@HistorywithCy]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed this and thanks for subscribing! Hope you enjoy the past and future content as well!

[@draganjagodic4056]

@@HistorywithCy Indeed. Such content is both informative and always pleasure to learn something new or just refresh the existing knowledge. And always relaxing in the evening, after the work. Thank You and sincere regards.

[@cal2127]

love your vids

[@HistorywithCy]

Thank you, and thanks for watching!

[@martinkupka3575]

Very interesting video, as very few information can be found about this topic. How about another Video about the Greek dark age in relation to the whole European / Mediterranian situation of the same time period?

[@user-gd3xy2vl1s]

EXCELLENT!

[@HistorywithCy]

Many thanks!

[@Notmehimorthem]

Really good points re Homer

[@Nomadestra1776]

I'm reading on ancient Greece now. One of the things I find most curious is how, despite the dark age of Greece suggesting much of the population's social order being broken and lost in time somehow, Greece was able to come back and find its way once more, and stronger and more sophisticated even after the dark age. The city states, politics, art, culture, was in a way just biding its time to come back. The classical age is what most people think of when they think Greece, but the politics and city-state styles of democracy started thousands of years prior. It's like the people of Greece just knew they had something worth holding onto, and so the social structures were simply lying dormant in the dark age.

[@lewis7315]

The really important classics of my 1950s childhood have already been removed from the librarys as having been unread and so trashed.

[@madsdahlc]

Or as professor in an online lecture Said about the man in the lefkandi tomb : “He was a high ranking person in the local citystate in that area “.

[@cn.7200]

Thanks

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks so much for the support, really appreciate it!

[@AGS363]

21:10 Well, what would be the frame of reference? Dark Age does not mean that everyone returned to living cave dwelling hunter-gatherers. It describes a reduction in documentation and a decline in complexity regarding the society. And I would argue that the disappearance of 3/4 of your population and the abandonment of most old centers of power, speaks for a major upheaval. (By the way, the same is true for the Dark Ages between the fall of the Roman Empire and the medieval time; not everyone perished, not everything was lost, but it still was a rather chaotic time.)

[@andywomack3414]

How widespread was literacy in these societies?

[@darksaurian6410]

I need to watch the Greek playlist. I tried reading Herodotus twice and couldn't get into it but I got through Josephus alright. I know what it is, I've watched all of Cy's mesopotamian playlist and it made the book easier to get into. Thx for reading all the books and then making videos. I never could have done it in that order.

[@andywomack3414]

I've started reading "The History of the Persian War" but haven't gotten past the story about the King of Sardis who love his wife so much that he insisted that his best friend and body-guard hide in the King's bed-chamber so he could see the King's wife naked. Things did not turn out so well for the King of Sardis. His wife was rather pissed.

[@OakCityGamers]

Omg I’m not early. But still early for me. Love this! You doing basically history channel retrograde. You know b4 the THEORIES! @Miniminuteman just did an amazing talk at a university in Virginia. Keep bringing the records to light

[@CLP99th]

I don't think we should abandon the Dorian invasion hypothesis so quickly.

[@Shimra8888]

The discontinuities in Greek history is fascinating. How can the Classical Greeks know so little about their Bronze Age ancestors? How could the Greeks forget writing their unique Linear A system? How can a lowly title such as Basileus (butler) come to overall Wanax (king) ?? Why didn’t the Greeks keep better historical records like the ancient Chinese who display more continuity??

[@pranveraohri1204]

The reason is that greeks did not exist at that time.The forced hellenisation of history is still in progress leading to numerous hypothesis and speculations but not to the truth.I find your comment very mindful.Greetings!

[@nasosgerontopoulos5267]

It would be quite interesting if you could make a video dedicated to a trial of interpetation of the homeric poems. I mean, trying to link them to historic events or periods. The poems themselves reveal some things, like Nestor refering to the chariots being used in battle, but not recalling how. Its pretty interesting since, as you mention, the poems helped to create the sense of Panhellenism.

[@robertbrooks6167]

Hell of a lesson - the internet doing what it should teaching and training the world....

[@Nikanoru]

This makes me think of the time periods after mass extinctions where I used to think of life as being devastated and struggling, where in reality a lot of it was starting to thrive in new ways to fill all the newly empty niches.

[@jerrycornelius5986]

Very interesting. It seems to me that the start of the Greek dark age was very cataclysmic; the end of Mycenaean civilisation, writing and at least one strata of society. Many elements of classical Roman civilisation also survived the European dark ages but no one disputes that it was a catastrophic collapse of civilisation. I guess the distinction is between merely cataclysmic and total permanent destruction.

[@ezzovonachalm9815]

@jerrycornelis5p86 There WAS a cataclysm that has induced the end of the bronze age, migrations of populations, political anarchy in nearly all states and cultural extinction due to the interruption of commercial links around the Mediterranean : all these changes and the dark age was due to the explosion of one volcano ( probably Thera) with destruction of structures, followed by darkness, cold ,arrest of vegetal growth, famine, migration of entire populations and extinction of cultures in the whole sud mediterranean bassin , Syria, Mesopotamia, Indus civilisation, Egypt, Grece, Italy... The explosion was between 6500 and 1200 ± 800 BC. No trace of an other volcano than Thera has been found. cf The Bronze Age Collaps.

[@S3Kglitches]

great

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks!

[@Bogey1022]

There's a really good book called "Citadel to City State" that covers this period

[@cheeseonwheels1]

hey where do you get all the cool music for your videos from? love all of your stuff btw.

[@HistorywithCy]

It comes from a site called Epidemic Sound. Thanks for watching - and listening!

[@pikmin4743]

ah yeaaa

[@GregoryShtevensh]

I love this channel! Subscribed

[@jimmyscherwitz5631]

Love me some Cy-fi!

[@codyclick190]

Always the highest quality. Thank you Cy

[@HistorywithCy]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for watching!

[@juanzulu1318]

14:41 i am confused: are the relicts on the left sides some kind of swords? I have never seen those and never though that such estoc like weapons might have already in use in the ancient time

[@HistorywithCy]

Hi! No, those are actually bronze pins. Thanks for watching!

[@juanzulu1318]

@@HistorywithCy oh, ok. So I misjudged the size and they are pins, like for the hair? I had this thought too but they looked so large to me 😀

[@danielschaeffer1294]

I took a course from the late Walter Ong, who maintained that the invention of the vowel (18:40 ff.) was one of the greatest inventions in history simply because it made texts easier to understand. Hebrew and Arabic didn’t use them, which is why much of the Koran is nearly incomprehensible.

[@kaloarepo288]

Surely the same sort of thing happened to the western Roman empire after the fall of Rome and transference of the capital to the East. And perhaps for the same reasons - invasions by outsiders being one of them and these outsiders didn't have the know how to continue with the standards of the previous culture. Then there may have been other factors too like climatic changes and natural disasters.

[@Invictus_Mithra]

I did not know about the Ionian migration or that the Greek mainland was so depopulated at that time. It's sad that there are virtually no Greeks left in Anatolia when it contributed so much to their culture

[@cosmomusa]

one mentions the 776 was not the first Olympic games, but the first who started to counting

[@HistorywithCy]

Yes correct, the first Olympics that was recorded. Thanks for the clarification and for watching!

[@user-lh1wr9sr8m]

I appreciate the sober approach of these videos. Even some actual academics are reticent to out and out say that Homer is myth when it clearly is. Maybe it is myth based more or less loosely on something depending on the changes within the vagaries of time, but it is clearly not a historical document in any way.

[@Kakirinkato-san]

❤👍👍

[@rouven17]

Intro Musik name ? 🤍

[@TracyD2]

Great civilizations rise and fall 🥺

[@andywomack3414]

When Hephaestus crafted a shield for Achilles he presented several scenes. Could these scenes be vignettes of life at the time of Homer? The development of the Polis?

[@forestdweller5581]

It sort of makes sense that when you have so many Greek leaders and troops fighting in Troy for so long, turmoil arises back in Greece. And upon the return of the troops to Greece more turmoil....Those guys were gone for a very long time and folks back home would have evolved in separate ways perhaps. Maybe they did not have much of an idea what to expect from the war far away anyway...or even heard much about it. Their internet and news media were offline at the time 😁

[@mueezadam8438]

When an eye of the ancient world blinked

[@jamelcrawford2815]

@2:25 why is it a Dark Age,when there was a hardly identifiable Greek society before 1100 bce?

[@craigkdillon]

You describe early Greek rule was done with Chieftains. Rome, too, was ruled by Kings. Then by 400 BC -- several Greek City states are Republics or Democracies. Rome is a Republic. Carthage is a Republic. WTF was going on?? Why the move towards democratic or at least oligarchic governments?? I always found it interesting that the two powers of the Mediterranean, Rome & Carthage, were both Republics. When reading about the 2nd Punic War it is humorous how both Scipio Africanus and Hannibal were subverted by their Senates. Both had to deal with political rivals back home. Both were accused of committing crimes of some kind against their states. For instance, Carthage refused aid to Hannibal in Italy. After Scipio won the honor of going to Carthage for final victory, his enemies saddled him with the shamed legions of loss at Cannae. How can that not be interesting???

[@lewis7315]

What happened is later writers saw no point in copying and preserving what to them were irrelevant and unimportant documents. The same thing has happened in our own history. Only a tiny fragment of the writings of the people in the early American period has survived. Most of what is left is moldering forgotten in some rarely visited archives. Like in ancient times, the Vandals and agenda/ narrative driven book burners are happily burning the few books left. Did the late Roman era Vandals (an actual invading tribe) get a bad rap? I wasn't there so don't know :)>

[@ryans2118]

The powers that be like then and now really know how to dictate history!

[@Mikethemerciless11]

Is there any indication of disease striking the region that led to the dark ages? It seems that if there was a large drop in population, disease might've been a factor.

[@alanpennie]

Very possibly. We don't really know why The Bronze Age Collapse occurred.

[@pablogats4627]

Natural disasters is most likely

[@jdranetz]

Volcano eruption on Santorini?

[@williambeckett6336]

The latest scholarship I'm aware of calculates the collapse to 1176 BCE. Or at least that's when the societal system collapses became systemic and irreversible.

[@jelkel25]

There's no society stays at the top of its game forever. To survive it sometimes has to downsize, get lean and mean. Maybe a lesson for us in the present.

[@HistorywithCy]

Haha sounds something like what Thanos would say! I'm kidding, but yes I think since the decline was over a few generations, it may have just been people having less children overall and emigrating abroad and less due to disease, famine or something similar. Just my thoughts, thanks for watching!

[@henkstersmacro-world]

👍👍👍

[@HistorywithCy]

Thanks man!

[@Dominic-mm6yf]

Did many Myceneans de camp and leave with the Sea Peoples abroad? Why did the Greeks adopt a Phoenecian script? Unless Greek descendents of Levantine based Sea Peoples went back home.

[@azwris]

The Phoenician alphabet is part of Hellenism and therefore not adapted, but actually brought back from a place founded by Phoenix (Φοίνιξ), who was after all also a Greek. Nice video and very precise besides the fact that's mentioned above. Thank you!

[@alexguest9937]

Personally I think, just as with the British 'Dark Ages' which weren't actually as 'dark' as portrayed, these times for the Greeks should probably more accurately be called the 'POOR Ages'. As it strikes me that it is actually the supply of MONEY which dried up (for whatever reason), forcing destitution, hardship and famine on the once proud Mycenaean societies. In Britain, it was almost certainly the curtailment of coinage from the Western Roman Empire which impoverished the nation, after it's abandonment by the empire around 410. Surely there is some correlation here?

[@chriswest4875]

Babe! New History with Cy video just dropped!!

[@kidmohair8151]

I shall indeed, as you have requested, stay tuned. like the "dark age" that succeeded the disintegration of the western Roman empire, people still went about their daily lives, doing all the things that they did before the onset of said age of a lack of illumination. it wasn't dark to them, just to us.

[@siavashamin951]

Isn't the imprition of the homer myths represent for the dark age greeks? Not only an attempt to create the early coherent sense of green but also exclude and limit the groups that later on reached society sofistication couldn't claim greekness due to not be mentioned in Homer texts as tribes present in the conflicts?

[@simonmoorcroft1417]

Really interesting period. I have been researching the late Bronze Age and Dark Age period for a few years now. Evidence points to a climate change event linked to a change in Atlantic weather patterns. It lowered temperatures, reduced regional rainfall in several regions of the northern hemisphere and created 'aridification' events in lower latitudes. This shows up as lower average temperatures in Northern Europe and Western Siberia and drought conditions in Central Asia, the Near East and the Mediterranean. The effects probably built gradually at first before a collapse of substance farming occurred. Central Asia and Indus Valley also suffered from shifts in weather systems. The collaspe of the BMAC and the IVC cultures probably occurred due to reductions in average rainfall levels over a couple of hundred years. If you look at the climate patterns of the whole Bronze Age you can see that regional cultural collaspes and the fall of empires linked to century long reductions of average rainfall levels. The climate change in the Mediterranean and Near East was powerful enough to change to types of plants that remained could exist in the region. Prior to the climate event the region could support many species currently found to the north of the the Near East and Med. The types of flora and fauna we see in the region today are likely the result of the late Bronze Age climate change. Earlier than this the region was on average wetter and cooler. Taking a long view the climate changes that occurred during the Bronze Age could be linked to a general trend after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Not sure of the reasons but it could be linked to long term fluctuations and cycles in the temperature of the sun and perhaps even subtle changes or cycles in the Earth's orbit caused by Jupiter and other planets or even our systems interaction with the whole Milky Way Galaxy.

[@juelbriggs447]

Great analysis.

[@wonderplanet343]

An ad showed. A ‘brother’ dressed like a dentist in this tooth product commercial cannot even say “sensitivity”. Stay away from my mouth ❤😂

[@cringlator]

Ξέρω τους φίλους μου και μάλλον θα γύριζα και θα έτρεχα…

[@Looter92]

They should call it the Dork Age and the Doric Invasion. The people didnt read and write because it was dark and they couldnt see but Homer was blind so he didnt know it was dark

[@yehoshuadalven]

Interesting that both the Greeks and the Israelis believed they are descendants of foreign inovadors, while the scientific knowledge shows they are not. 🤔

[@HavanaSyndrome69]

Yay cy

[@BrandonStewartCS]

Engagement comment

[@barrybarlowe5640]

You see this in many cultures. We may be seeing it in Western culture, now. There are several factors that could create such dark ages: plague, war, famine, political disputes within a nation... Have civil wars in people that used to be unified could result in a scattering of people fearful of one another. They could be overwhelmed by nomadic people's not native to the area and disappear with little evidence of their passing.

[@Ptaku93]

funny how you pronounce during as "dooring"

[@lillegion3121]

U didnt even mention luwians or any other west anatolian civiziations...

[@HistorywithCy]

Hi. Because this is a video on Greece, not ancient Anatolia. I'll do that in another video someday. Thanks.

[@lillegion3121]

@@HistorywithCy oh okay i was expecting full bronze age history sorry i didnt know have a nice day

[@HistorywithCy]

@@lillegion3121 No problem, I will definitely cover it but after I visit Turkey next year. I want to visit the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara to see more artifacts from Luwian, Hittite and other peoples of that region. Rest assured, I will definitely devote a good deal of time into covering that area of the world, I promise! Thanks for your interest, really appreciate it!

[@lillegion3121]

@@HistorywithCy dont miss troy museum in canakkale there r lot of luwain things especially luwain seal of troy

[@hedylus]

Hi Cy. I think that your assessment of the Greek speaking dark age seems logical, but to be honest, I just don't believe any of it. You're imagining that the Greek speaking world was parochial and limited in a similar way to what it is today, but, the Greek language comes from Central, North or East Asia, probably even from as far as northern China (today) but these peoples were hit by a series of devastations which caused them to migrate and flee over large distances West and South and probably over an extended period of time too. The end result of that is that Europe was populated by these peoples and their language has come to be known as proto Indo European, but in fact, it was just very basic Greek characterised by its use of the case system mostly but by certain words and phrases which come from the same source. Basic Greek. Tne original migration of Greek speaking peoples, must have taken place around 5000BC , and because of this it is when they first start appearing in South Eastern Anatolia and working with the Rassunai who themeselves had migrated from Sumeria (later becoming the Etruscans) but they only reached the coasts of Anatolia in the first Greek migration, but no further. The second and more devastating migration came around 2600BC and these Indo Europeans who settled in Southern Europe are generically known as the Lacedaemonians and they brutalised even the first phase of Indo European Greek speakers, who by the time of their migration had become integrated with what has been referred to as the Minoans, but were probably peoples driven out of their central European homeland sometime before 2600BC by these Indo Europeans migrating from the East. And they escaped this violence by sailing across the sea and settling in Crete, followed by bands of marauding Lacedaemonians whoi also settled there. The invasion of the Dorians was a secondary migrationn of Indo Europeans who had settled in Central, Eastern Europe and the Balkans displacing the peoples who were living there (see above). It's possible that they were Finnish/Hungarian peoples because some elements of Linear A is not Greek but a basic Hungarian language based upon the words used for basic foods, items and actions. However, these Dorian Greeks are more closely identified with the northern Europeans Indo Europeans through weaponry, dress and habits since they were the same peoples as the Lacedaemonians. Consequently, you can imagine that it would have been a full on devastating war for a long time for dominance. Let's not forget the biggest volcanic eruption in history which would have destroyed evcerything and polluted the land for hundreds of years, or more. The violence and brutality of all Lacedaemonians is grossly underestimated, but this aggression seems to have been motivated by some historic trauma in the East Asian lands from whence they came. It's suggested that their women folk were thought to be so polluted by rape and human annexation (probably by giants) that they were abandoned in search of new lands and new women, hence the different racial elements of Indo Europeans. It has always been stated that Greek is not a nationality, but a culture only, and that culture was thought to be that sense of civilisation which builds bigger and better things quickly and efficiently and creates wealth and more culture, partly because without women, you are motivated to do everything extremely rapidly in order to survive, hence the violence and aggression. The Lacedaemonian colonies across the Mediterranean Sea and all the way into the Atlantic and to the South of France only tells a part of the Greek story. Lacedaemonian colonies almost filled Italy, but after the Thera devastation ,colonies have been found as far north as Southern Switzerland and there would have been more Greek speakers in Italy than anywhere else. Over time, with the new alphabet introduced by the youngest son of Odysseus of Ithacca, LATINOS, the language fixed and diversified, as all languages do when you use a different alphabet and adopt new words and phrases based upon local experience and dialect. Anyway, Cy, you can see that Greece never existed as a single nation until 1907, when the Russians and the Austrians decided that a small group of Greek speakers in what is now Greece, should constitute the location of that entire ethnicity, completely ignoring the presence of millions of other Greek speakers scattered around the Roman World in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Southern Italy, Asia Minor, the Levant in North Africa and even further afield in Afghanistan. I'll leave it like that for the time being, because there's so much more to be uncovered which I don't know about and can't conceive of, but the Greeks have educated the whole world with their culture and civilisation and have been known by a number of names over the years and are called different names by different peoples. But THEY are the basic Indo Europeans known by yet another name.

[@beepboop204]

🙂🙃🙂🙂🙃🙃🙂

[@user-sn6dz2ie4k]

Your timing of events is not correct. The Trojan war for example was in essence a Greek civil war and is placed around 1200 BC. Studying the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer we see the exact opposite of what you are describing. Rich couture, great military and naval pawer from many cities thru out Greece that participated in the war show organized cities with remarkable economic growth (they should have if they could afford navy and troops).

[@HistorywithCy]

Hi. I'm not sure about what part of the video you're referring to but, this program is not about the Trojan War (c. 1250 BC) or Mycenaean Civilization, but the centuries after it. During this era according to archaeologists, all of the great cities you refer to had gone in decline and the economy contracted greatly. Perhaps you are referring to another period? Thanks for your comment.

[@user-sn6dz2ie4k]

@@HistorywithCy Iliad and Odyssey were written the centuries after it.....

[@HistorywithCy]

@@user-sn6dz2ie4k which is clearly stated several times in the video...

[@user-sn6dz2ie4k]

@@HistorywithCy Then if there was such an advanced civilization to write these masterpieces that resonate even today where is the dark ages ? Don't forget that few hundred years later there was the zenith, the golden era of Greek civilization which certainly did not come abruptly but as continuation of previous societal achievements.

[@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi]

"Dorians, a group from further north" ... no, the Greek did not believe that, they had plenty of stories about the Heraclids, that is the descendants of Heracles, fighting all over ... those were their Dorians, not invaders from the North The "invaders from the North" was invented during the XIX century.