The Greek Dark Age Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mycenaean Greece

The Mycenaean Greek civilization-- so-called for the city of Mycenae in the northeast of the peninsula of the Peloponnesus-- was the original Greek civilization centered in the southern half of the Greek peninsula. It was composed of several relatively large population centers, such as Pylos, Orchomenus, Tiryns, Gla, Iolcos, Athens, Midea and Thebes. Some of these cities had sophisticated palaces, with royalty, aristocrats and bureaucrats, and were based on a "palace-economy"--a centralized economic system that redistributed wealth.

Mycenaean Greece was also part of a larger international political and economic system--the Bronze Age civilizations--that included the Hittite kingdom, Egypt, the Levant and the Mesopotamian kingdoms. Sometime around 1200 BC, this system collapsed and with it the Mycenaean Greek world. Theories abound as to why.

Answer: Dorians

Some scholars believe that the Dorians moved south around 1100-1000 BC into the Peloponnesus. Thucydides stated that it occurred 80 years after the sack of Troy. The movement, it is believed, came across what is now called the Gulf of Corinth, instead of by land through the Greek Isthmus. The problem is that, other than the fact that Doric Greek is one of four Greek dialects, there is little evidence, archaelogical or otherwise, of when, how or if it occurred.

Note: There were other invaders around the early twelfth century BC that may have had a more indirect impact on the Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece. The "Sea peoples" -- ancient Viking-like invaders-- may have impacted Greece by cutting off sea lanes and negatively affecting trade links between the other Bronze Age civilizations. Egypt itself was hit twice by these people in a relatively short period of time. Not much is known about these mysterious invaders except they existed.

Answer: Heracles

In myth, the Return of the Heraclidae-- the children of Heracles(descendants really)-- is associated with the Dorian migration/invasion into the Peloponnesus. Legend has it that the first invasion attempt was unsuccessful. The second came about 100 years later, again according to myth, when Temenus, Cresphontes and the twin sons of Aristodemus, Procles/Eurysthenes, all descendants of the legendary Heracles, led the Dorians south.

These Heraclidaean leaders are associated with the founding of Argos, Messenia and Sparta respectively. Procles and Eurysthenes were said to be the founders of the the dual Spartan monarchial dynasties--the Agids and Eurypontids.

While there is no evidence of this event, the legend appears to have come out of the Dark Age and provided major future ideological justification for Sparta's domination of Messenia and, eventually, the Peloponnesus starting in the eighth century BC.

Answer: Sparta

All of these cities were prominent within the Peloponnesus and, with the exception of Elis, of Doric ancestry. But in terms of future military and political influence, none came close to Sparta. Its military came to be considered the best in Greece, and its constitution led to nearly 500 years of political stability. Sparta was probably founded, and perhaps got a boost from the Dorians, sometime in tenth or ninth century BC.

Answer: Oikos

Some scholars believe that Mycenaean Greece lost 75-90 percent of its population, and the larger cities like Pylos, Tiryns and Mycenae were destroyed through violence of some sort. Many cities showed evidence that they were destroyed by fire at around the same time. Famine may also have played a part in some kind of political chaos.

But there is no doubt that emigration east to the island fringe of western Anatolia(modern Turkey) and to islands south into Aegean picked up as well. The question unanswered for the most part is why they emigrated in the first place.

But Mycenaean Greece was lost. As a result the oikos began to spring up in the hinterlands of Greece and society was shaped around individual families and then groups of families, living in relatively primitive homes isolated from others, which eventually became villages, with a tribal chieftain leading.

The oikos would serve as the seed in the soil that would grow, first, into Archaic Greece of the eighth century and flower, later, into Classical Greece of the fifth century.

Answer: They never re-populated

The great cities like Mycenae and Pylos( the latter in far western Peloponnesus) never gained even a fraction of their population back. The same can be said of the lesser population centers as well. It is thought that no more than squatters ever came back, but they built nothing.

When the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated Mycenae for history in 1876, there was no modern city nearby or on top of the ruins. Whatever happened at the end of the Bronze Age -- invasion, political upheaval, famine or earthquake/volcanic activities, all theories put forth -- was sufficiently destructive that the cities could not recover.

Answer: Writing

Writing was a technology that thrived with specialization that came as a result of urbanization. It is probable, given the complexity and clumsiness of the Linear B writing system used, that bureaucrats, who kept track of all products that came into the palace for redistribution, were the only ones who knew how to write.

When the Mycenaean cities were destroyed, the ability to record events went with it. Writing did not recover in Greece until some time probably in the ninth to early eighth century BC with the adoption of an alphabet from the Phoenicians.

Answer: Iron

Mycenaean Greek weapons were made of bronze, which is made by mixing copper with tin in a 9:1 ratio respectively. While copper was fairly plentiful, tin was rare and could only be found in places like the island of Crete and around what is now modern Afghanistan. Iron is harder and is thought to have perhaps given the Dorians an advantage in warfare.

Note: The disruption of the tin supply may have a played a larger part in the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations. There is archaeological evidence that the people of Crete moved from the coast to stronger, more inaccessible fortified points inland like Kharphi. Homer hints that the Dorians may have reached as far as Crete. The Sea people could also been the issue.

Answer: Thessaly

Thucydides states that fifth century BC Boeotia, as he understood it, was settled by people that came from Thessaly, which is to the immediate north, about sixty years after the Trojan War. One can speculate, using Thucydides' timeline, that they may have been pushed south initially, and then bypassed to the west some twenty years later, by the Dorians crossing the Gulf of Corinth into the Peloponnesus.

Answer: Athens

Thucydides states categorically that most of Greece was in a state of population flux and subsistence agriculture due to invaders, but that Athens suffered the least because of the relative poverty of her soil in Attica compared to the rest of Greece. Because there was little upheaval in Athens, and Athenians had been there so long, the legend grew that the Athenians "came up from the soil." With the destruction of Mycenaean Greek civilization, the historian says that Athens grew in population and that this in turn led it to begin to colonize the Ionian islands off western Anatolia.

Answer: Oral tradition

With the loss of writing, Greek bards told their stories orally. It is thought by many that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were stories that had been passed down orally over hundreds of years. When he wrote them down around 750 BC, his version may have been bits and pieces told by many oralists for a very long time that he worked together into a coherent whole. If one reads Homer, one can see many phrases repeated over and over that may have assisted the oral storyteller in memorizing the story, e.g., "that child of morning, rosey-fingered dawn."

Answer: False

Chamber burial is generally associated with the Mycenaean world, although there was some variety even during this time. The great Shaft burial chambers and the Tholos(Beehive)chambers discovered at Mycenae could not have been built during the Dark Age due to the amount of manpower and wealth that would have been needed.

There was also probably a general flattening of social rank after the collapse and thus less need. Single inhumation burials and cremation became more common. The archaelogical find at Leftkandi on the island of Euboea dates from the mid-tenth century and contains what appears to be a chieftain buried with his weapons, a female nearby with some of her belongings and three horses also nearby. Leftkandi is also some evidence that, after 200-250 years into the Dark Age, Greek society was socially and politically re-stratifying, with something like an aristocracy at the top.

Answer: Proto-geometric/Geometric

Early Dark Age pottery was known as proto-geometric, while in the later Dark Age it came to be known as geometric, for their abstract geometrical designs. Mycenaean pottery was heavily influenced by the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, which was absorbed or conquered by Mycenaean Greeks in the sixteenth century BC, and was more stylistic than geometric pottery, often with pictures of nature, religious or battle scenes.

Answer: The First Olympic Games

The First Olympiad is said to have occurred in 776 BC at Olympia in northwest Peloponnesus. While it featured only one event--a race--and the dating is traditional like so much else from this period, the fact that it is even dated from this time frame suggests that communication between cities or communities was good, something more than mere day to day survival was important and that perhaps the Greeks, despite their always fractious nature, thought of themselves as a separate and distinct people from the rest of the Mediterranean world.

Answer: The Archaic Greek Age

The Archaic Age generally is thought to cover 800-500 BC. It is an age defined by huge social changes( increased Greek colonization of the Mediterranean world as a result of overpopulation), economic reforms(the de-monetizing of Lycurgan Spartan society and Solon's credit reforms in Athens)and huge political changes(like the rise of the Greek polis in the earlier part of the Age, then tyrants and finally the aspirations of the demos--the people).