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Most of our study of ancient Greece is focused on what we call the Classical Age. The Classical
Age of Greece is a two hundred year period that began about 500 years before the Common
Era. During the Classical Age, the Greek poli combined to defeat the powerful Persian Empire.
The Greeks of the Classical Age created art, architecture and literature that have influenced
the way we live today. The Classical Age came centuries after two earlier civilizations,
the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, flourished and then vanished, leaving the Greeks in a
period later called the Dark Age of Ancient Greece.
The Minoan culture developed on Crete, an island southeast of the Greek mainland. The
Minoans developed a system of writing and traded with other cultures that bordered the
Mediterranean Sea, but the Minoan civilization mysteriously disappeared about 1450BCE. There
is some evidence that the fall of the Minoan civilization is related to a catastrophic
volcanic eruption. The Minoans traded with the Mycenaeans, a civilization on the Greek
mainland that was known for making bronze weapons and pottery. About a millennium before
the Common Era, the Mycenaean culture grew weak and was conquered by invaders from the
north known as Dorians. For the next several hundred years, Greece
fell into a period called the Greek Dark Age. There have been several dark ages in history.
A dark age occurs when a civilization regresses, or forgets some of the things they know. During
the Greek Dark Age, few people could read and write. The Greeks of the Classical Era
had no written records of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, but the Classical Greeks had
many legends handed down by word of mouth. These stories became the basis of what the
Greeks later called their Heroic Era.