After the fall of the Mycenaean palaces, Greece entered a period that historians once called the Dark Ages, partly because so little evidence survives. Populations shrank, many settlements were abandoned, long-distance trade dwindled and the art of writing was lost for roughly four centuries.
A world in transition
Life became smaller and more local. People lived in villages led by chieftains, and many Greeks crossed the Aegean to the coast of Asia Minor, settling the regions later known as Aeolis, Ionia and Doris. Iron gradually replaced bronze for tools and weapons, and potters decorated their vases with the neat circles, zigzags and meanders of the Protogeometric and Geometric styles.
Not so dark after all
Discoveries such as the large building and rich burials at Lefkandi on Euboea, dated to around 950 BC, show that some communities stayed prosperous and connected. Above all, the period kept the past alive through oral poetry. Travelling bards sang of Troy, Achilles and Odysseus, polishing the stories generation after generation until they took shape as the epics we know as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
The road to recovery
By the ninth century BC trade with the Phoenicians was growing again, and from them the Greeks borrowed an alphabet that, with the addition of vowels, became their own. Writing returned, towns grew, and the stage was set for the rise of the city-state.
