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By Root 1000 0

evolved into Greek mythology was a mélange—like some fusion cuisine—of some existing local stories with bits and pieces borrowed from other Near Eastern civilizations, including the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and the Phoenicians—from whom the Greeks also appropriated a writing system, later adapted as the Greek alphabet. Forced by their geography to turn to the sea, the Greeks had early on mastered trade and travel. As they ventured out around the Mediterranean ports of call, they encountered these other ancient neighbors. Eventually they brought back not souvenirs but samples of these foreign cultures and religions to what was then Greece—the hilly, rocky, northern mainland jutting out into the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Ionian Seas; a southern peninsula called the Peloponnesus; the many islands that dotted the surrounding waters; and the west coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey).

These “foreign influences” found their way into a Greece that was already a mythological melting pot. Beginning around 2000 BCE, waves of conquering invaders had swept into Greece and merged the stories of their gods with those that were already established on the Greek mainland. These bloody invasions go back to a time long before the brief Golden Age of Greece that so many students falsely equate with Greek history. The story of Greece actually plays out over a much longer span, and its civilization and mythology can be separated into five distinct periods.

The earliest known civilization to flourish in what came to be thought of as Greece was not actually Greek but a sophisticated and rather extraordinary culture called Minoan. Based on the Mediterranean island of Crete, the Minoan Period may have begun as early as 3000 BCE—around the same time as Mesopotamia and Egypt—and then suddenly and somewhat mysteriously disappeared from history around 1400 BCE. In the early twentieth century, the long-abandoned capital of Crete’s early civilization was discovered by English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in one of the most dramatic finds in history. At Knossos (or Cnossus), Evans uncovered the remains of a huge, luxurious, and graceful palace, whose walkways were paved with cobblestones. The palace was complete with ceramic bathtubs and fully functioning, flushable indoor plumbing serviced by an elaborate system of drains. Its walls were decorated with brightly painted frescoes depicting handsome, naked young men and women somersaulting over the backs of bulls, an ancient Mediterranean “rodeo” that was clearly tied into the worship of an elaborate bull cult, a vestige of the Minoans’ origins in Asia Minor. The palace may have also provided the source of one of the most significant myths in Greece, the story of the Minotaur, a fearsome half-man, half-bull that demanded human sacrifices.

Although the Minoan written language, Linear A, has not yet been fully deciphered, we know it was most likely used—as the early cuneiform was in Mesopotamia—for keeping track of trade and commercial accounts. The Minoans were among the first seagoing traders, and their ships sailed to Egypt to do business in the land of the pharaohs. Most likely the Minoan deities included a sea god whom the Greeks later called Poseidon, and an earth goddess who later became the Greek goddess Rhea.

The Minoan Age flourished until about 1400 BCE, when it more or less disappeared from history, perhaps partially crippled by a devastating volcanic eruption nearby, or conquered by new arrivals, known as the Mycenaeans. These Aryan, or Indo-European, warlords had swept into mainland Greece about five hundred years earlier, presumably coming from the steppes of the Caucasus Mountains (between the Black and Caspian Seas). A warrior race, the Mycenaeans rolled over the existing inhabitants of the Greek mainland—whose own origins are similarly mysterious—and began to fuse their own stories and beliefs with those of the people they conquered, as well as those of the Minoans they encountered on Crete. This era is called the Mycenaean Age, after Mycenae, one of the most significant cities of the period