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Eras and Their Highlights - What Were The Dark Ages Of Ancient Greece?
What were the Dark Ages of ancient Greece?
The Dark Ages of ancient Greece is the name given to the 300-year period of cultural decline that began when the Dorians, nomads (wandering tribes) from the northwestern part of the Greek mainland, conquered the Mycenaeans on the island of Crete around 1100 B.C. Although the Mycenaeans had developed an advanced civilization (called the Mycenaean Age; 1650–1200 B.C.), their bronze weapons were no match for the Dorians' iron swords. As the Dorians pillaged and burned Mycenaean cities, the Mycenaean survivors fled to remote areas or eastward to Athens; some settled on the coast of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). The Dorians rejected the life of the great Mycenaean cities in favor of their nomadic shepherding and hunting life. A tribal people, they possessed a harsh sense of justice, and the period was marked by feuds among clans.
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