NEOLITHIC PERIOD (6000 - 2900 BC)

According to historians and archeological findings, the Neolithic Age in Greece

lasted from 6800 to 3200 BC. The most domesticated settlements were in Near
East of Greece. They traveled mainly due to overpopulation. These people
introduced pottery and animal husbandry in Greece. They may as well have
traveled via the route of Black sea into Thrace, which then further leads to
Macedonia, Thessaly, Boeotia etc. The second way of traveling into Greece is
from one island to another and such type of colonies has been found in Knossos
and Kythnos.
The main characteristics of this era are the climate stabilization and the
settlements of people. The Neolithic Revolution arrives with these people who
traveled from Anatolia, Turkey. The economy of the region became steady with
organized and methodical farming, stock rearing and, bartering and sculptures
like pottery. People stopped traveling from region to region and permanent
settlements in Greece. They domesticated animals like sheep and goats and grew
plants and crops. They made their bases around sites where there was ample
water supply and in open landscapes. The Neolithic Greece people can be said
as the first 'farmers' and their lives were less complex and simple. 
Archeological findings show more settlements in Northern Greece, like Thessaly
and Sesklo. Villages were found in Thessaly around 6500 BC while settlements
in Sesklo started in 5500 BC. The inhabitants of these areas couldn't have been
more than a hundred people. The houses were made of stone foundations with a
roof made of a thick layer of clay and timber. They were one-room houses
measuring 10 to 50 square metres.
A small village was also found at an area called Nea Nikomedia, where people
resided around 5800 BC. The houses were made of sticks and mud surrounded
by fences.
The villagers made different types of attractive pottery like cups and dishes.
Most of them were designed in a red and white pattern. Excellent remains of
such pottery can found from sites at Sesklo. The figurines that were created in
the Neolithic Era were carved to suggest a female goddess. Offerings in the form
of clay animals and birds to the goddess have been found in the caves. Till now,
the oldest artifacts of Neolithic Era have been found in the Knossos region
dating back to 3500 BC.
The village of Sesklo is supposed to have been destroyed in 4000 BC with
people possibly from Northern Greece who were more armed than the villagers.
These people made new settlements called Dimini, which is nearby the
settlement Thessaly. It covers about 0.8 hectares and distributed in circular
enclosures. At first they were thought to be built for defence purposes, but later
it was found that they for distribution of land.
Crops and plants that were domesticated by the colonies in Neolithic era have
been ancestors of plants such as barley and animals such as goats, dogs and pigs.
At a settlement in Argissa, findings suggest that domestication of animals took
place as early as 8300 BC. Even in the Sesklo area, cattle bone fragments have
been found.
During the last two decades, the settlements of Neolithic era found have gone up
to one thousand; research is going on how the people of that Era communicated
their economy, technology and the environment they lived in.

History of Greece: Bronze Age

The bronze age

a period that lasted roughly three thousand years, saw major advances in social,
economic, and technological advances that made Greece the hub of activity in
the Mediterranean. Historians have identified three distinct civilizations to
identify the people of the time. These civilizations overlap in time and coincide
with the major geographic regions of the Greece. The Cycladic civilization
developed in the islands of the Aegean, and more specifically around the
Cyclades, while the Minoans occupied the large island of Crete. At the same
time, the civilization of the Greek mainland is classified as “Helladic”. The
Mycenaean era describes Helladic civilization towards the end of the 11th c.
BCE and is also the called “Age of Heroes” because it is the source of the
mythological heroes and epics like Hercules, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
All three civilizations of the Bronze Age had many characteristics in common,
while at the same time were distinct in their culture and disposition. The
Minoans are considered to be the first advanced civilization of Europe, while
Mycenaean culture had a great deal of influence with its legends and Greek
language on what later became the splendor of Classical Greece.
“The Mycenaeans are the first ‘Greeks’” (Martin, Ancient Greece 16).
 Either by fortune or force, the Mycenaeans outlasted both the people of
Cyclades and the Minoans, and by the end of the 10th c. BCE expanded their
influence over the Greek mainland, the islands of the Aegean and Ionian seas,
Crete, and the coast of Asia Minor. However, after 1100 BCE Mycenaean
civilization ceased either through internal strife, or outside invasions (the Dorian
invasions have been proposed as a possible explanation), or through a
combination of the two, it is not known for sure.
What is known is that the extensive damage done to the Mycenaean civilization
took three hundred years to reverse. We call this period “the Dark Ages” partly
because the people of Greece fell into a period of basic sustenance with no
significant evidence of cultural development, and partly because the
incomplete historical record renders our own view of the era rather incomplete.
Next: The Dark Ages

The Dark Ages

During the Dark Ages of Greece the old major settlements were abandoned
(with the notable exception of Athens), and the population dropped dramatically
in numbers. Within these three hundred years, the people of Greece lived in
small groups that moved constantly in accordance with their new pastoral
lifestyle and livestock needs, while they left no written record behind leading to
the conclusion that they were illiterate. Later in the Dark Ages (between 950 and
750 BCE), Greeks relearned how to write once again, but this time instead of
using the Linear B script used by the Mycenaeans, they adopted the alphabet
used by the Phoenicians “innovating in a fundamental way by introducing
vowels as letters. The Greek version of the alphabet eventually formed the base
of the alphabet used for English today.” (Martin, 43)
Life was undoubtedly harsh for the Greeks of the Dark ages. However, in
retrospect we can identify one major benefit of the period. The deconstruction of
the old Mycenaean economic and social structures with the strict class hierarchy
and hereditary rule were forgotten, and eventually replaced with new socio-
political institutions that eventually allowed for the rise of Democracy in 5th c.
BCE Athens. Notable events from this period include the occurrence of the first
Olympics in 776, and the writing of the Homeric epics the Iliad and the
Odyssey.

The Archaic Era

The next period of Greek History is described as Archaic and lasted for about
two hundred years from (700 – 480 BCE). During this epoch Greek population
recovered and organized politically in city-states (Polis) comprised of citizens,
foreign residents, and slaves. This kind of complex social organization required
the development of an advanced legal structure that ensured the smooth
coexistence of different classes and the equality of the citizens irrespective of
their economic status. This was a required precursor for the Democratic
principles that we see developed two hundred years later in Athens.
Greek city-states of the Archaic epoch spread throughout the Mediterranean
basin through vigorous colonization. As the major city-states grew in size they
spawn a plethora of coastal towns in the Aegean, the Ionian, Anatolia
(today’s Turkey), Phoenicia (the Middle East), Libya, Southern Italy, Sicily,
Sardinia, and as far as southern France, Spain, and the Black Sea. These states,
settlements, and trading posts numbered in the hundreds, and became part of an
extensive commercial network that involved all the advanced civilizations of the
time. As a consequence, Greece came into contact and aided in the exchange of
goods and ideas throughout ancient Africa, Asia, and Europe. Through
domination of commerce in the Mediterranean, aggressive expansion abroad,
and competition at home, several very strong city-states began emerging as
dominant cultural centers, most notably Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes,
Syracuse, Miletus, Halicarnassus among other.
Next: Classical Greece