narrator: they rose from nothing.
and changed everything.
edith hall: the ancient greeks changed the world in about
1,000 years flat.
bettany hughes: this was a time and a place when there
was a collision of ideas and inspiration that resulted in a
truly extraordinary culture.
narrator: but of all the many great civilizations
in the ancient world, what made this one so special?
eric cline: people talk about the greatness of greece.
why them, why there?
that's the question.
narrator: and why are we, millennia later,
so intimately linked to the radical revolution
that took place here?
michael cosmopoulos: ancient greece and our
modern society are connected.
we cannot possibly understand our society if we do not
understand how it was born and how it developed.
narrator: it's a story for the ages and for today.
of attaining greatness and losing it.
neil de grasse tyson: how long did ancient greece last,
was it forever?
no, it was fleeting.
angeliki kottaridi: it was the beginning of a beautiful
new era of civilization.
narrator: "the greeks."
right now on this national geographic special.
♪[national geographic theme music plays].♪
narrator: it's been nearly 2,500 years since
workers put the finishing touches on
the western world's most iconic structure.
100,000 tons of the finest marble.
more than 70,000 individual segments.
exquisite sculptures all came together in majestic
symmetry on this high rocky outcrop to proclaim the
supremacy of athens, a civilization at its peak.
neil de grasse tyson: to stand there i got a little chill,
y'know, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
i would say almost a spiritual moment for me.
bettany hughes: these beautiful statues and
monuments declare to the world that they have achieved
extraordinary levels of civilization.
narrator: two and half millennia later,
workers are racing to rescue the parthenon from
the ravages of time.
centuries of wars, earthquakes, looting,
plundering, have taken their toll.
yet, it still stands,
a proud reminder of human achievement.
one that continues to inspire,
even through the most trying of times.
not just in greece,
when navigating the present,
the answers often lie in the past.
the greek writer herodotus, the world's first historian,
taught us that.
michael cosmopoulos: there is a great deal of continuity
from ancient greece to modern society.
they are part of the same cultural continuum.
narrator: the people who raised these columns certainly
had their share of challenges:
tyranny and famine,
economic and environmental collapse, endless wars,
an abysmal human rights record.
yet somehow they invented everything from science and
philosophy to drama and democracy.
greece, not egypt, not persia, not rome,
became the cornerstone of western civilization.
the question is, how?
edith hall: if we don't ask them how they did it and
why they did it, then we are not even attempting to
understand the world as a whole.
narrator: it turns out the greeks themselves were seeking
to understand their extraordinary rise long
before we were.
greek myths tell us they were born out of chaos,
quite literally, "chaos" being the greek word for
chasm or void.
from the void at the dawn of the universe arose gods like:
gaia, earth, uranus, sky;
tartarus, the underworld;
and eros, love.
through a violent succession of infanticide and patricide,
jealousy, deceit and revenge, this first generation of
divinities, gave rise to the gods of olympus:
zeus, poseidon, hades, athena and all the others.
and ultimately, that god-forsaken mortal species,
humans, to toil away on earth.
yet the myths also tell of one figure who took pity
on us humans, rescued us from oblivion and paid
the price for it.
the greek playwright aeschylus wrote of this hero's travails
at the height of greece's golden age more than
2,500 years ago.
his name was prometheus.
the play: prometheus bound.
tonight, nearly 6,000 people file into a theater as old as
drama itself, the epidaurus, to experience it just as their
ancestors would have.
[speaking greek].
tasos nousias plays the leading role.
tasos nousias: prometheus is a titan, he is a god.
zeus had decided to eradicate mankind.
prometheus is the one who stands up for the people.
without him, mankind would be lost.
edith hall: so he actually steals fire from olympus.
humans haven't got it, they are still living in horrible
caves, they've got no heat, they've got no light,
they can't make anything new, they can't cook.
and he gives them fire, and of course that is the precise,
inflammatory moment when the human race takes off,
and they start inventing everything.
narrator: with fire, the rebellious prometheus endows
mortals with all the elements of civilization.
there was farming.
prometheus: they had no sign of winter, or flowery spring,
or fruitful summer, until i taught them to note
the risings and settings of the stars.
narrator: science.
prometheus: yes, and numbers, the basis of science,
i invented for them.
narrator: language.
prometheus: and the combining of letters,
mother of the muses' arts,
with which to hold all things in memory.
narrator: literature, philosophy, democracy, drama.
when this play first debuted, they were all just making
their grand entrances onto the world stage.
edith hall: prometheus of course suffers terribly and
zeus attaches him to a mountain and he has an eagle
to chew at his liver in posterity.
but inside every ancient greek head was the idea that
if somebody was trying to deprive you of something
that would help you, you could go get it,
so that is this rebellious
spirit of the ancient greeks incarnate in an
ancient titan god.
bettany hughes: what the author aeschylus is telling us
is that humans should use their wits and their wisdom
and their will to try to make their own lives better.
narrator: of course, this play came at the peak of
greece's golden age.
by then, even the ancients knew that their many
achievements weren't simply gifts from the gods;
they were hard earned over generations.
the true story behind their dramatic rise lies beyond the
myths and begins many thousands of years earlier,
when, as prometheus tells us...
prometheus: they had no knowledge of houses built of
bricks, nor how to work in wood,
but lived underground like swarming ants
in sunless caves.
bill parkinson: classical greece didn't just
come out of nowhere.
if you really want to understand where the greece of
athens, the greece of the acropolis came from,
you need to look way back in the past.
you need to look several thousand years back in the
past at places like this.
narrator: this is alepotrypa cave on southern greece's
mani peninsula, a cave used by some of the earliest
farmers in europe.
anastasia papathanasiou: it is very important site.
it is the richest cave in greece and one of the
richest in europe.
narrator: some have suggested it was the mythical
gateway to hades,
the greek underworld, and it's easy to see why.
in various pockets all around this nearly
1,000-foot long cavern, scientists have exhumed
more than 150 bodies.
archaeologists anastasia papathanasiou and
bill parkinson continue to find more.
bill parkinson: from 8,000 years ago until about
5,000 years ago, agricultural villagers,
farmers, some of the first farmers in europe
buried their dead in here.
they carried out ritual activities here and these are
the people who eventually laid the foundation for
what became classical greece.
narrator: compared to other ancient civilizations it seems
the people here in greece never had it easy.
the cave provides a window into a key period in
human history, the neolithic.
when by around 10,000 years ago,
humans first started to give up hunting and gathering,
and began settling down.
anastasia papathanasiou: it is the first time period in human
life that the people, they start living in a way like us.
they are agriculturalists.
they base their diet mostly on grains like us today.
narrator: depending on where you lived and what resources
you had access to, some societies during the neolithic
were much more primed for greatness than others.
the egyptians had their nile,
its predictable floods became
the lifeblood of the fertile crescent,
as did the tigris and euphrates to the north.
here fertile plains fed booming populations,
allowing expansive mesopotamian civilizations
to flourish.
further east, indian civilizations thrived in
the valley carved by the indus river.
while the yellow river gave rise to the first chinese
settlements and dynasties.
in southern greece, people weren't quite so fortunate.
there was no mighty river, no nutrient-rich soil.
here, as an ancient saying goes,
the gods threw down a pile of rocks.
bill parkinson: parts of greece are extremely rocky.
y'know, you basically have mountains and sea,
there's very little arable land,
there aren't many flat spaces.
it's kind of hard as a farmer to eke out a living
in that environment.
narrator: just outside of alepotrypa cave,
new finds tell a dark tale about how difficult life here
in the neolithic was.
bill parkinson: how we doing?
narrator: parkinson and his team have uncovered the
skeleton of an infant and a young couple in
a tender embrace.
bill parkinson: we've got at least two,
probably three individuals, right,
because we've got fragments of a fifth leg.
narrator: with resources scarce,
it seems competition was fierce.
nearly a third of the people discovered here suffered
blunt force trauma, likely the result of
tribal wars over resources or territory.
average life span was just 29 years.
anastasia papathanasiou: they had lots of physical stress.
their diet wasn't optimal.
they have a low content of iron and animal protein.
we have high infant mortality.
narrator: taken together, the skeletons reveal a bleak
picture for these early greeks.
by the time the cave collapsed around 5,000 years ago,
the nearby settlements were collapsing along with it.
the greeks may have become nothing more than a
historical footnote, were it not for one obvious,
albeit forbidding, advantage.
bettany hughes: there is an interesting thing about greece
is that wherever you are you are never more than
50 miles away from the sea, so the sea you can almost see
and hear it, it is part of your experience.
narrator: with its inlets and islands,
greece has one of the highest proportions of
coastline to land area on earth.
and with such limited resources,
the sea became a lifeline.
michael cosmopoulos: having to survive in a very difficult
environment made people stronger.
it made people tough, it made people defiant.
it made people turn to the sea.
edith hall: the greeks were actually forced by their own
terrain into becoming brilliant navigators very,
very early on.
narrator: some of the earliest archaeological evidence
of their voyages dates to more than 10,000 years ago.
when a type of highly prized obsidian found only on the
volcanic island of milos turned up on mainland greece.
milos is just one in a circular cluster of islands
in the aegean sea
aptly named, the cyclades.
deborah carlson: these islands on a very practical level made
it possible for the first seafarers to navigate around
the aegean to basically island hop the same way tourists
do today and that played a really pivotal role in the
development of greece.
bill parkinson: one of the key things that happens
is the development of a new kind of boat,
it's called a long boat,
and this lets you move way more stuff,
you can go way further.
narrator: in addition to obsidian,
longboats allowed early mariners here to
haul resources like silver, copper, lead,
and marble around the aegean.
by 3200 bc, people had settled the islands and a
new culture was born.
the cycladic people, as they've come to be known,
would put their mineral resources to exquisite use,
carving intricate marble statues and figurines,
some of them life size.
bill parkinson: some people think they're deities.
they might be gods, they might be representations
of goddesses.
we know that they have some sort of a ritual connotation
and that's because they're almost all from burials.
narrator: whatever the intent, their minimalist,
abstract features would echo through the ages,
inspiring the likes of picasso and modigliani.
but beyond their art, the cycladic people may have left
an even more indelible legacy on the creation of greece.
their islands became a crossroads of goods, ideas,
and cultures bridging the entire eastern mediterranean.
bill parkinson: they're living on these islands,
they rely on the sea, they know the sea.
and because of the seafaring skills that they developed,
they're all of the sudden plugged into this huge network
that's linking all of the eastern mediterranean together
and that's about to become hugely important.
narrator: especially around 5,000 years ago
when the stone age gave way to the bronze,
and the world's first global economy.
today it's oil that makes the world go round.
but back then the economy was driven by an
amalgamation of 90% copper to 10% tin,
heated to a blistering 1100 degrees celsius.
bill parkinson: when you mix that copper with another
alloy, another kind of metal, it becomes hard.
now you can start to use it for weapons,
you can start to use it for functional tools.
narrator: versatile as bronze was,
few had the copper or tin to produce it.
eric cline: the copper is mostly from cyprus,
that's where we've got the name, in fact, kypros.
the majority of tin in the bronze age is coming from
what we would call afghanistan today.
that is a trip of thousands of miles.
narrator: demand for bronze spawned trading networks from
egypt and the middle east all the way to italy,
with goods like gold, ivory, and pottery being exchanged
for copper and tin.
much like today, the mediterranean became a
shipping superhighway.
bettany hughes: there's a kind of vogue for the idea of
globalization but i tell you that is nothing new.
this was a very globalized world.
narrator: with their central location and command
of the sea,
early greeks would have been well positioned
to partake in this bronze age trade.
but archaeological evidence of their involvement can
be hard to come by.
much of it lies at the bottom of the sea.
beverly goodman: so much of our history is underwater.
if we have changes in sea level,
because there was an earthquake, because of trade,
there's loads and loads of shipwrecks.
and if we just stop at the coastline every time,
we're missing out on a lot of the information that
we need to get.
deborah carlson: you have to look to the sea and
you have to look under the sea to understand
the ancient greeks.
and we try to that with the excavation
of ancient shipwrecks.
narrator: one treasure trove of clues has been
the uluburun, one of the oldest,
most complete shipwrecks ever discovered.
she went down in the eastern aegean in the heyday
of the bronze age around 3,500 years ago.
underwater archaeologists at the institute of nautical
archaeology in bodrum, turkey have been diving on
the site since the 1980's.
so far they've recovered nearly 20,000 artifacts,
including over a hundred amphorae,
the shipping containers of the ancient world.
and enough copper and tin to yield 11 tons of bronze.
tuba ekmekci: we are lucky that they sank and
we found them.
narrator: tuba ekmekci directs the research center.
tuba ekmekci: it is like a time capsule ship loaded on
one date and starts sailing and sank.
so everything belongs one date.
the copper was coming from cyprus,
the tin was coming from afghanistan area.
narrator: there was amber from the baltic,
ebony and ivory from africa, and glass ingots from egypt.
tuba ekmekci: it was like a united nations, everywhere,
think about this, all these objects coming from completely
different places and got together in one boat.
narrator: in all, the ship was carrying some 20 tons of
luxury goods and raw materials from nearly a dozen different
ancient cultures, the most revealing snapshot
we have of bronze age trade.
and many believe she was headed for the aegean islands.
eric cline: one of the questions that we ask is of
course what would the rest of the world possibly
want from greece at this time?
narrator: trade fueled the most powerful bronze age
civilizations, and the early greeks would have needed to
bring something to the table.
the first clues about what they offered came from one of
the largest islands in the mediterranean, crete,
where by around 2000 bc, a new dominant culture had
overtaken the people of the cyclades.
though they left behind some of the most extraordinary
palaces in antiquity,
who they were, where they came from,
and what language they spoke are still a mystery.
even the name modern day archaeologists ascribed to
them comes from greek mythology,
the minoans from minos, the infamous king of crete.
during his reign, king minos exacted a gruesome tax on
prisoners and innocents alike, casting them into a
treacherous labyrinth in the depths of his palace.
there, they'd face a frightening beast,
the half man, half bull, minotaur,
which would devour them whole.
archaeological evidence, however,
is painting a very different picture of the
people who lived here.
maria vlazaki: the minoans developed the first
great european civilization.
they came into contact early on with the great palaces of
egypt and mesopotamia and they in turn founded great palaces.
narrator: the egyptians had a big head start on the minoans,
having built their great pyramids and sphinx
some 500 years earlier.
but by 2000 bc, as goods and people were moving around
the mediterranean, inspired minoans began raising majestic
structures of their own.
palaces like this one at knossos, the ancient capital,
were astonishingly advanced, complete with paved streets,
the first in europe, flush toilets and a sewer system.
bettany hughes: this is a very early civilization and
yet if you walk through the palaces that
the minoans created,
you're passing through the most exquisite artifacts and
architecture that you would still be pushed to
try find around you in the modern world.
they created buildings that had anti earthquake
engineering, beautiful fine teacups that are as fine as
the kind of greatest chinese porcelain,
amazing gold jewelry and earrings and necklaces.
so this is an incredibly sophisticated culture.
narrator: and with the minoan's command of the sea,
this culture didn't stay on crete.
the minoans took over many of the nearby cycladic islands,
including santorini.
today, of course,
the island is a major tourist destination.
back then it was a strategic trading post that
gave the minoans access to powerful neighbors.
but to play in the big leagues with the likes of the
hittite empire in mesopotamia or the egyptians,
the minoans would have to offer more than fancy
pots and jewelry.
eric cline: if you look to the egypt and the eastern
mediterranean what do you find that is from greece?
well, you find a lot of their pottery.
narrator: and inside the pottery?
eric cline: probably some of it is perfume,
wine is certainly not out of the question.
narrator: and one other commodity that to this day
speaks to greek ingenuity and resourcefulness.
about an hour's drive from knossos,
stelios kaliouris' family has been cultivating
olive trees for generations.
olive oil practically flows through people's
veins on crete.
it's used in soaps, medicines, for storing foods,
even christening babies.
and it was every bit as desirable back in
the bronze age.
according to ancient texts,
there were three basic elements in life.
maria vlazaki: food, clothes and you perfumed olive oil.
yeah, it is real.
they write like that.
it was the medicine to make their life better and
to live longer.
narrator: but starting and tending olive groves
isn't nearly as easy as stelios makes it look.
edith hall: it's an incredible amount of physical labor and
it takes many years to settle in before you get
a really good crop.
so what this required of the ancient greeks was,
was considerable planning.
you might never see a decent crop.
it would be your grandson who did before it
started taking any profit.
narrator: only an innovative, resourceful,
and patient people were able to unlock the olive's
potential and reap the rewards.
edith hall: the olive is fundamental to the ancient
greek and indeed the modern greek identity.
it's also good for trading with.
narrator: demand for minoan olive oil was so high,
once it began flowing, it bankrolled their civilization.
edith hall: so the olive one way or another tells you
a very great deal about the greek personality and intellect.
narrator: and thanks to another great minoan creation,
we get a vivid depiction of what minoan life was like.
bettany hughes: amazing frescos describing their world
and their ideas about both culture and about
the gods around them.
narrator: the frescoes depicted a world of plenty,
with strong, youthful heroes, bountiful wildlife,
lush landscapes and vivid illustrations of how
the minoans interacted with and tamed the sea.
maria vlazaki: when civilization is under development,
they do more things,
not just to eat and to put clothes on them.
minoans developed a nice life,
a way to live better than before.
neil de grasse tyson: successful civilizations are
the ones that manage to bestow upon its citizenry the
luxury of time that enabled them to think about things
other than their own survival.
narrator: minoan frescoes became the envy of the
mediterranean world.
their remnants have been found as far away as egypt,
israel and turkey.
eric cline: we don't' know that they are actually made by
people from crete or if they are locals that are
trained in that style.
you really can't tell.
but definitely either the artists themselves are being
sent around or maybe people from the near east that went
to crete learned how to paint in that style and
then come back.
narrator: however it happened,
this kind of exchange represents a crucial moment
for the world.
michael cosmopoulos: so when you travel to other places,
you don't just bring back products.
you bring back also ideas.
bill parkinson: interaction is absolutely critical for
innovation, when cultures come into contact and are
exchanging information, that creates new information.
it sort of builds on itself.
narrator: it's clear the minoans were key players in
this globalized idea trade, but their role in greece's
rise didn't last long.
beginning in around 1600 bc,
right at the height of their civilization,
life began to crumble.
for years, the leading theory for the minoan's
collapse was that they were brought down by a
massive volcanic eruption on santorini.
the eruption left behind the familiar crater bay we
see here today; it was even offered up as proof
for the myth of atlantis.
but more recent evidence reveals the volcano did not
wipe out the minoans completely.
excavations on crete indicate they were still
thriving for another 100 years after santorini exploded.
the more likely culprit is less cataclysmic perhaps,
but more insidious.
long before santorini blew her top,
a fresco discovered here at akrotiri suggests the minoans
may have suffered a more violent fate.
the fresco depicts an invasion,
with the minoans falling victim to some of the ancient
world's fiercest warriors.
donning their trademark boar tusk helmets,
these were the mycenaeans, the next people to carry the
torch of greek civilization.
their kingdoms, centered here at mycenae on mainland greece,
are the stuff of legend.
hundreds of years later, they would be forever immortalized
in paintings and in epic poems like
the iliad and the odyssey,
not to mention countless hollywood revivals.
it was all inspired by this mycenaean age of heroes.
there was helen of troy.
woman: "beware the greeks bearing gifts."
narrator: and agamemnon.
man: "i will kill thee."
"so shall we all brother."
narrator: and who could forget:
man: "the invulnerable achilles."
bettany hughes: this was kind of one of the first drafts
on greekness and they were extraordinary,
they lived extraordinary, exciting,
sumptuous lives and i'm sure that the later greeks heard
stories about them and were constantly trying to live up
to that which had gone before to this age of heroes.
narrator: but long before the mycenaeans became legend,
they first had to oust the minoans.
it's not clear how they did it,
whether through a series of brutal invasions or
just a gradual takeover and assimilation.
but one thing is clear throughout greek history:
the culture always seems to carry through.
kim shelton: early on you can see that the mycenaeans
are really in awe of what the minoans have,
and in some cases i would say they even imitate them.
michael cosmopoulos: we have cases where mycenaean rulers
will decorate their houses, their palaces if you want with
wall paintings and frescoes inspired from the minoans or
they will import minoan luxury items as signs of
their connection with the more sophisticated and
powerful culture.
narrator: and the mycenaeans didn't limit these cultural
appropriations to the minoans.
their beehive shaped burial mounds at mycenae,
for example, resemble underground tombs from egypt.
mycenae's famed lion's gate mimics the sculpted
lions flanking the ancient hittite capital at hattusa.
kim shelton: the mycenaeans were always good at combining
the things that they liked.
they were able to be inspired and even take elements from
other cultures, but combine them with their own.
narrator: but when it came to the minoans,
the mycenaeans did more than just borrow.
mycenaean kings took over minoan palaces,
including knossos.
they dominated the minoans at sea,
commandeering their trade routes.
before long, the minoans faded into history,
while the mycenaeans flourished,
expanding their civilization around the aegean.
and the way they held this vast network of states
together was with one final minoan appropriation, writing.
minoans wrote in a script archaeologists call "linear a."
texts have been found all over palaces like knossos but
unfortunately not enough to decipher what they say.
in perhaps their smartest appropriation of all,
the mycenaeans took the linear a symbols,
adapted them into a new script known as "linear b" and
began using it to jot down words in their own language.
deciphered in the mid-1950's,
we now know linear b is an early form of
the greek language.
and since language is the key definer of a civilization,
we can now designate the mycenaeans as the
first true greeks.
thousands of years later, we're still finding and
reading their early texts.
on the southwest coast of greece,
the town of pylos straddles both myth and history.
in homer's odyssey, this is where telemachus,
son of the famed odysseus,
first puts to shore in search of his father.
odysseus had been mia for the last 10 years since
fighting the trojan war.
to help him find his dad, the goddess athena sent
telemachus to seek the counsel of wise king nestor,
who served with odysseus in troy.
and for the last 7 decades, high on a cliff outside of
modern day pylos, archaeologists have been
digging up nestor's palace.
alongside vats of wine and thousands of ancient cups,
nestor seems to have thrown a good party,
were 1,000-odd linear b tablet fragments.
but shari stocker, lead excavator here,
explains they were a far cry from epic poetry.
shari stocker: the linear b tablets are
mostly lists of things.
what people bring to the palace,
what they owe to the palace,
things that are donated to the gods.
narrator: offerings to zeus and hermes, goods like olives,
barley, goats and wine, writing in these early days
was the equivalent of census records and
product inventories,
scratched into clay by ancient accountants
to administer society.
shari stocker: they were never meant to be preserved;
they were recorded on clay, but it was raw clay,
so at the end of each season,
they could just put them in water and,
you know, reform the clay and make new tablets.
narrator: in fact,
the only tablets to survive are the
ones that were discarded, accidentally baked and
hardened in burning ancient trash heaps,
or when a palace was burnt and destroyed.
shari stocker: so it is purely happenstance that we
have this archive preserved.
narrator: recently, one such piece of ancient trash
found at a small town called iklaina,
about 24 miles north of pylos, became archaeologist
michael cosmopoulos' treasure.
[inaudible chatter]
it may not look like much but this is the oldest
piece of greek writing ever discovered.
the earliest writing sample from mainland europe,
dating to the 15th century bc.
like all the other linear b tablets,
it's not the words that have everyone here excited.
on one side there's a man's name, "lat-uk-hos,"
followed by the number, one.
the other side contains what seems to be a heading
for a list of goods.
but that the tablet was found here at all,
way out in the boonies, is a big surprise.
cynthia shelmerdine: this is small and there is
only one of it.
but it's the only tablet that has ever been found at a town
site instead of a palace site on the greek mainland.
narrator: until now, we thought that writing was only
used in major cities like pylos and mycenae,
that no one else could read or write.
but the iklaina tablet shows otherwise and
that has broader implications.
with writing in more common use,
the reach of mycenaean kingdoms may have been much
more extensive and advanced.
rulers weren't just recording the comings and goings of
goods and workers at their palaces,
writing had given them control over a much wider,
more sophisticated network,
allowing them to keep track of communities
much farther afield.
cynthia shelmerdine: if you see written administration,
you know that you have hit the big time.
that is when we start to talk about states
and complex bureaucracy.
narrator: for cosmopoulos' team,
this tiny piece of clay offers evidence of an
important turning point for western civilization:
the birth of states.
michael cosmopoulos: we live in a world of states,
but it wasn't always like this.
the transition from a world without states to
a world where states dominate every aspect of our life,
it's one of the most fascinating chapters
in human history.
narrator: archaeology tends to focus on larger cities,
with temples, monuments and palaces,
overlooking smaller cities like iklaina.
michael cosmopoulos: it's like trying to understand
how the united states was formed.
in order to do that, you have to look at the
history not only of the capital, washington, dc,
and the records there, but also the history of
the specific states.
narrator: through iklaina we get a sense for how states in
early greece came together,
as bigger cities started taking over less powerful ones.
michael cosmopoulos: this was a city,
this was a city that in many ways was similar to the cities
that we have today.
for example, there was an area with government buildings,
which is where we are standing right now, and the town,
the residential quarters, the houses,
sprawled all around this area.
narrator: there was running water, extensive roads,
and massive stone walls, thought by later greeks to
have been built by the mythical cyclops.
cosmopoulos suspects the thriving city must have been
enticing and that it wasn't long before it was overtaken
by a more powerful king based in pylos.
michael cosmopoulos: with every territory that he
annexed, his state expanded, became more complex.
you have the central capital, tituk, and then
a number of district, semi-independent, capitals.
this is the hypothesis that we are working on.
narrator: the mycenaeans likely went on absorbing
cities and territories across greece in this way
as they expanded their empire.
by around 1200 bc,
they'd earned their legendary reputation.
for those at the top, life was good.
michael cosmopoulos: if you were a member of the
upper class, it would have been wonderful,
because you would live in a palatial residence, a mansion.
likely you would have slaves.
narrator: but bronze age prosperity hardly
trickled down.
bettany hughes: so this was not in any way egalitarian,
it was only a certain tiny,
tiny percentage of the greeks who are benefiting.
it is almost so perfect for so few it's bound to collapse.
narrator: and collapse it did.
if there were headlines in 1200 bc,
they would sound freakishly familiar to ours today.
eric cline: we have drought.
we have famine.
we've got earthquakes.
we have invaders, we have internal rebellions.
narrator: there were even mystery warriors from the sea,
according to ancient texts.
and some, or all of these,
brought the mycenaeans to their knees.
michael cosmopoulos: civilization is obliterated.
little by little the mycenaean capitals are either
abandoned or some of them are destroyed violently.
by approximately 1,000 bc the mycenaean civilization
is a thing of the past.
narrator: and the devastation wasn't confined to greece.
once the dominoes began to fall,
the globalized bronze age world would never be the same.
eric cline: we've got a systems collapse,
is what we've got here.
over a period of 200 years, you go from the height of
civilization to almost absolutely nothing.
the great empires are gone.
no more hittites, no more assyrians,
no more babylonians, even the egyptians have been so
weakened that they are just a shadow of what they
had once been.
narrator: it was the worst collapse in human history.
we weren't back to living in caves exactly,
but civilization suffered a tragic blow.
those gifts prometheus had endowed upon the greeks,
writing, science, art, were all but extinguished.
eric cline: so we get what we refer to as the
first dark ages.
and out of that they have to climb back up.
they will, we are going to get classical greece.
we are going to get athens and sparta, and democracy.
but it is going to take a while.
[audience applause]
narrator: the opulent bronze age was over,
but the lights didn't go out on greece completely.
were it not for these dark times, in fact,
the greeks might never have achieved the
golden age to come.
maria vlazaki: we have the great destructions,
but in the universe, one civilization starts ends and
another rises from the ashes.
narrator: like the mythical greek phoenix,
out of the ashes of palaces and kingdoms would rise
a new civilization.
and this time the gods' gifts wouldn't be reserved
for a select few elite,
they'd be available to everyone.
bettany hughes: it is very rarely that there
is a total disaster.
as a species we are very good at finding the benefit,
of managing to kind of make things better even if
it can take us quite a few centuries to do that.
narrator: born out of chaos,
delivered from caves, tested by the sea,
and forged in an age of heroes and bronze,
these restless, resourceful,
innovative people would finally be free to carry the
torch of progress on their own.
to learn more about this program,
visit pbs.org.
"the greeks" is available on dvd.
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