The comparative unity of incipient civilization in the Aegean area was eventually shattered by new movements of people into the Cyclades and the southern part of the mainland. Toward the end of the 3rd millennium, many of the settlements on the mainland, such as that at Lerna, were destroyed by fire, and the houses built afterward were of a different type and more primitive. These new houses were long and narrow, only one story high, and apparently gable-roofed. The entrance was at one end, and there was often a small compartment, which might be semicircular (apsidal), at the other. The new houses were evidently built by foreign invaders settling in the places they had destroyed. Some of the previous inhabitants, however, may have survived as hewers of wood and drawers of water. A new formal dark, burnished pottery appeared, as well as a simple ware with a linear pattern on a light ground; sauceboats, however, disappeared. This pottery has many features in common with that of the succeeding Middle Bronze Age; thus there may be ethnic affinities. The site of the House of Tiles appears to have been reserved as sacred or unlucky ground, with a ring of large stones above its burnt ruins.

The Middle Bronze Age on the mainland (c. 2000–1550)

The mainland was disrupted again about 2000 bc with new levels appearing at sites such as Lerna in the Argolid and Eutresis in Boeotia; there seem to be new burial habits on both coasts. Some scholars see an intrusion from the north of “Indo-Europeans,” but this is a difficult, perplexing topic. Some handmade pottery may have Balkan affinities, and there is string-impressed ware at a few places that resembles in some ways the pottery of the Black Sea region. In any case, the newcomers apparently were pastoralists. Although not wealthy, they may have been one source for the appearance of the horse in Greece, an established fact before the Shaft Grave Period. Many scholars view this wave, which covered most of Greece, as representing “the coming of the Greeks”; others regard the Greek language as a rich amalgam formed within the confines of Greece and not imposed from outside. A new pottery appeared on the mainland: a class of gray burnished ware, wheel-made, with sharp angular shapes copied from those of metal vases. The polished gray surfaces of this “Minyan” ware (as it was named by Schliemann after the legendary inhabitants of Orchomenus in central Greece, where he first came upon it) look as if meant to imitate silver; later, some pieces were coloured red or yellow. After some time, “Matt-painted” pottery also appeared, again with simple linear patterns on a light ground. The traditional “long house,” often apsidal, was the preferred architectural form; by the end of the period, some villages were walled.

The level of cultural attainment seems low, and not much metal circulated at first. The newcomers quickly developed connections with the islands and Crete; they imported Cretan vases, and some local vases show mainland ships. Minyan and Matt-painted pottery has been found in the nearer islands and even as far as Crete and the Anatolian coast. Burials grew from single interments to larger “family” chambers at Eleusis in Attica and on both coasts; in Messenia, in parts of the Argolid, and at Marathon there appeared a novel kind of multiple burial, with individual cists (burial chambers) or pithoi (large earthenware jars), the whole cluster being covered by a single mound. These tumulus burials, which had already appeared earlier at Leucas in the Ionian Sea, may reflect Balkan practice. In Messenia a Late Bronze Age beehive, or tholos, tomb was cut into the older mound as though that particular burial place were special. By the end of the 17th century, the newcomers had taken their full place on a newly emerging international scene and were always to be in a special relation with the Cycladic islands, Crete, and, probably, Troy. Bronze knives and gold ornaments were found with some burials, and, by the time of the Mycenae Shaft Graves in the 16th century, a luxuriant style of native goldwork had been created.

The Cyclades

On the island of Cythera (Kíthira), between western Crete and the southern tip of the Peloponnese, a colony of Cretans appears to have replaced a settlement of people from the mainland toward the end of the 3rd millennium. In the 17th or 16th century, Cretan colonies were established at Triánda in Rhodes and at Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia. Later Greek legends seem to refer to colonies from Crete, if not from Knossos, in some of the Aegean islands. Much Cretan pottery found its way to the Cyclades and was also imitated there; but, although the Cycladic people adapted some fashions and ideas from Crete, they retained their own distinctive traditions. Cycladic vases are decorated with flowers, especially lilies and saffron crocus, with swallows, wild goats, and dolphins, and with warriors and strange griffins, in a lively, splashy, and colourful style. Frescoes at Ayía Iríni (Aghia Eirene) on Ceos (Kéa) show blue birds, a town, hunting, a girl picking flowers, myrtle branches, and a copper ingot, and those at Phylakopi on Melos depict women in clothes embroidered with birds, fine textiles, flying fish, and lily blossoms. At Akrotíri on Thera, a town buried under a volcanic eruption about 1500 bc, there are in almost every house fairly well-preserved frescoes displaying wonderful, flat, brightly coloured scenes of boxers, fishermen, antelopes, birds, and blue monkeys. The two most dramatic ones are the “naval” or “miniature” frescoes from the West House, showing themes of war and peace in a seaside-and-country setting with whole towns watching elaborate ships, and the elegantly drawn set in Xeste 3, of girls and women picking saffron crocus, wearing their finest gold and rock crystal jewelry and elegant costumes; they are accompanied by blue monkeys. The Theran paintings are the best surviving Aegean documents for clothing, architecture, ships, armament, and daily life.