Greek Influence On Mycenaean Culture

The expanse of time that the term “Ancient Greece” defines is all the way from around 7,250 BCE when the first evidence of burial sites were discovered in Argolid, Greece, during the Mesolithic Period, to around the year 30 BCE when Cleopatra died in Alexandra, Egypt (1). That is the better part of 7,200 years. Trying to fit all of that information into five to seven pages would be nearly impossible. That is why I will be focusing on the Classical Era of Greece which spans from about 500 BCE to around 320 BCE. During this time in Greece there were many conflicts and wars, but there was also much growth in the cultural aspects of their society.

Aegean art is a cluster of differing cultures that flourished in the area of the Aegean Sea. The cultures combined inside Aegean art are Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean. The oldest and the most minimalistic culture that represents Aegean art are from the Cycladic culture. They used white marble carvings of female and male nudes (Figure 4.2 and 4.3). They also made roundish flat objects with handles, spirals, or circles (Figure 4.1). While Minoan culture focused on many different forms of art. They built magnificent “palaces” (Figure 4.5) that were filled with fresco paintings (Figure 4.8 and 4.9). These fresco paintings represented their love of nature which displays fish and plants throughout the paintings. Even their pottery displayed their naturalistic style. Now the final culture Mycenaean had a fiercer kind of art. There architecture was designed to be impregnable (Figure 4.19) and the fresco paintings from the Minoan culture is relatively gone. They made tombs that resembled the Egyptian tombs (Figure 4.25) that were filled with gold items and a gold masks that covered and resembled the face of the deceased (Figure 4.27).

Ancient Greece was a civilization of the Greek history commenced around the 8th century B.C.. Rested southward at the end of the Balkan peninsula, the dry land of Greece lies within the Mediterranean Sea. The rough lands caused travels and cultivation to be difficult, and Greece’s geography forced the Greeks to become fishers and sailors. As the new centering system, city-state arose, many nations were formed, and a series of warfare emerged. The battles stretched from the Persian Wars, where the Sparta, the Athens, and the other city-states of Greece united to defend Greece from the Persians, to the Peloponnesian War, how Spartans ended Athenian and the Democratic government, to the Hellenistic Age, after Alexander the Great conquered an

In order to explain the influence the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures had on the later Greeks it is important to understand the beginnings of Greek culture. The first known civilization of Greek culture were the Minoans, consequently, there is not a lot of information about this group (The Flow of History, 2007). The language used by the Minoans is referred to as Linear A, the language is said to have been the foundation for later Greek language. The Mycenaeans broadened the Linear A language to make it their own, it is known as Linear B.

Greek: Geography played an important role in the development of Gee civilization. The mountains and the sea played especially significant roles in the development of Greek history. Much of Greece consists of small plains river valleys surrounded by high mountain ranges. The mountain isolated Greeks from one another, causing different Greek communities to develop their own ways of life. The sea also influenced the evolution of Greek society. The Greeks lived on a number of islands to the west, south, and east of the Greek mainland. By 2800 B.C, a Bronze Age civilization that used metals, especially bronze, in making weapons had been established on the large island of Crete,

The timeline above gives detail about certain events that occurred in Greece during this time period. It starts out talking about the dark age. The Dark Age was a time that did not have any kings or tax collectors. The streets were trashed and buildings were destroyed. After the rebuilding was the Classical Period that had many cultural advances. The cultural advances included Philosophy, Literature, and Art. This period was followed by the Hellenistic Period. The Hellenistic Period was when Alexander the Great came to rule. He built an empire all the way from India to Greece. This period ended when Roman troops invaded and conquered many territories.

The vividly bold characters of fiction, themes and legends of Greek mythology have molded art and literature for many centuries. They appear in metaphorical paintings, like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, or epics like the Illiad and the Odessey, by Homer. They are also revealed in the tragedies of Sophocles and classics such as Antigone and Oedipus. Romantic poetry and slews of novels, plays, and films continue to enrich our culture even today. One area of Greek influence that stands out is their religious practices and myths surrounding their polytheistic beliefs.

The country of Greece not only lead the world in its development of architecture, but was a lead role in the trade industry. The country of Greece has led the world in many developing through its time and is utterly the staple of the word culture. Greek culture dates as far back to the stone age starting the earliest settlements in Greece date from the Paleolithic era, between 11,000-3,000 B.C. Excavations of the land around Greece have provided details about the early civilizations that have helped understand the past and the country's ability to continue to evolve and adapt through the centuries. The data and findings have shown that this country had many agricultural communities that were based around large masses of water and located on

Ancient Greece has influenced us today in so many ways. The first Greek people were the Minoans. Their success was based on trade, instead of conquest. They set up trade outpost throughout the Aegean world. They got new ideas about fields such as writing and architecture from Egypt and Mesopotamia. They used these ideas and adapted them into their own culture. We learned a lot about the Greek’s from their frescoes, which are colorful paintings completed on wet plaster. They often depicted Minoan society, and they told us that they valued the sea and they worshipped a bull as well as a mother goddess. In about 1400 B.C., Minoan civilization disappeared, and the Mycenaeans replaced them.

To begin with, there were a few causes that led up to Greece taking over. The main cause that brought the Greeks to take over was the influence of the gods. “And as for Helen, why are you angry with her? It is not she, it is not Paris, that has brought this great city of Troy to ruin; it is the anger of the gods” (Church 15). Queen Helen was captured by Paris so, Helen’s husband, Menelaus, lead an expedition to find her. With the help of Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon, they made it to Asia minor, to lay siege to Troy and requested for Helen’s return by Priam and

The earliest beginnings of the City of Rome commenced around 753 B.C.E., in the west central section of the Italian Peninsula. The Romans were a people that originated from many surrounding societies, including the Latins that inhabited the immediate area of Rome, the Etruscans to the North and the Sabines to the Northeast. The Etruscans were very influential on early Roman culture, as were the originating Latin tribes that first inhabited the area that Rome was built upon. Rome was positioned in a strategic area that gained its inhabitants some protections against foes due to its surrounding mountain ranges, river and sea. This area was also convenient for trading amongst the region due to its location along the Tiber River and its close

One way that surviving objects and monuments created by and for Mycenaean kings embodied their power was the way in which they were buried. In the textbook, it is stated, “six deep shafts served as tombs for kings and their families. The excavation of the royal shaft graves yielded many gold artifacts,” for example, the gold Mycenaean mask of a bearded man that was discovered in a royal grave. The way in which they were buried embodies their power in that it shows that they were royalty. A normal Mycenaean may not have been buried the same way as a royal Mycenaean would have been. By being buried with gold and other riches, a Mycenaean was sure to be differentiated as royalty and it would also show the power they possessed as a noble by being

Greece was full of great battles, thriving, and strong warriors. Greece is responsible for our way of government, and still influences our everyday way of life. They came up with the alphabet, the numbers, and our way of science, slightly altered due to new technology, They even came up with philosophy. The greek timeline is full of surprises.

The Minoan civilization was considered one of the first civilizations in Europe and modeled itself after Egyptian culture (Matthews, Noble & Platt, 2014). Quickly though, the Minoan culture was a culture created all of its own. Having settled on the Island of Crete, not much is known about the Minoans, as there is little written history on them and their language cannot be translated (Matthews, et. al, 2014). It is not even known if the Minoans were of Greek descent, yet they still had a direct effect on the later Greek culture (Osborne, 2016).

The country that I choose is Iceland. Iceland is very unique and interesting not only because of its clean air and amazing scenery but also its natural beauty and landscapes. Nature is a big force of Iceland but the volcano’s, waterfalls, and glaciers seem to attract most tourist. There landforms are probably the most unique. The Northern Lights is also something that people find very interesting because how it is created and the view you can see. It is something that everyone should see at some point in their life. The sources that I choose to use to research the Physical Geography, Economics, History, Cultural, and Political