Highlands Ranch High School - Mr. Sedivy
Highlands Ranch, Colorado

World History
Classical Greece

Ancient Greece:
The Minoan and Mycenean

Greek civilization developed from a combination of two earlier civilizations, Minoan and Mycenean. The Greeks contributed a great deal to Western Civilization.

Minoans:
Crete, starting 2800 BC. Civilization had been there since 6000 BC, Neolithic Times.

Myceneans:
Mainland Greece (came from Russia) in 2000 - 1100 BC. Their strength period being 1500 - 1400 BC.

Cities and Palaces

Minoans:
Main city - Knossos. In the center was a palace of 706,289 square feet, not a temple. The temple took up 1/5 of the town and was five stories high. It had bathtubs, flush toilets, hot and cold running water, and portable fireboxes. Passageways and rooms twisted and turned in a maze. Underneath the palace was a labrynth. There were many pictures and carvings of the double-headed ax. Five-thousand people lived there.

Decorated Queen's Bathtub from Knossos on the Island of Crete, 1500 BC

Myceneans:
Built palaces on hilltops and fortresses - acropolis (meaning "on the top of the hill") where people would come inside if they were attacked. They didn't merely build cities because of the threat of invasion - not that many people could get inside the acropolis. Inside the acropolis was a megaron, a room for important meetings.

The Acropolis at Athens, as it must have looked in 400 BC

Ways of Life

Minoans:
Farmed and fished. They grew wheat, barley, grapes, and olives. Surplus was traded for things they didn't produce. Their land was forested, so they also became carpenters and shipbuilders. The Minoans traded with Egypt. The threat of pirates led them to make war ships with three masts for speed, and a ram-rod. By 2,000 BC they were the world's first important seafaring civilization. The Minoans were peaceful since they were on their little island, and most of the rest of the world did not know they were there.

Myceneans:
Their land was divided into estates and farmed by tenants or slaves. The Myceneans were landowners who gave the king horses, chariots, weapons, wheat, livestock, etc. in exchange for protection. They liked to hunt. The women hunted in chariots along with men. The sale of olive oil made them rich. The Myceneans were violent, since they were on the mainland and were under the constant threat of invasion.

Rulers

Minoans:
Priest kings made laws and represented the gods on earth. They would go to the top of Mount Juktas to get the message from the gods, then go back and tell the people.

Myceneans:
Kings.

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