Aegean civilization

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Aegean civilizations

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Warrior armed with a figure-of-eight shield and boar’s-tusk helmet, ivory relief, c.
(click to enlarge)
Warrior armed with a figure-of-eight shield and boar’s-tusk helmet, ivory relief, c. (credit: Cliche, Ecole Francaise d’Archeologie, Athenes)
The Bronze Age civilizations that arose and flourished 30001000 in the region bordering the Aegean Sea. They include Crete, the Cyclades, the Greek mainland south from Thessaly, including the Peloponnese, and Macedonia, Thrace, and western Anatolia. The most significant were the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. The term also sometimes refers to Neolithic civilizations in the same region 70003000 .

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Columbia Encyclopedia:

Aegean civilization

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Aegean civilization (ējē'ən), term for the Bronze Age cultures of pre-Hellenic Greece. The complexity of those early civilizations was not suspected before the excavations of archaeologists in the late 19th cent. The most remarkable of the cultures was perhaps that of Crete, which was flourishing by the beginning of the 3d millennium B.C.; this was the Minoan civilization. On the mainland of Greece excavations have uncovered the remains of Mycenaean civilization. The exploration of the ruins of Troy provided knowledge of another culture, and ruins in the Cyclades have demonstrated remarkable early development there. The exact relationships of these different centers are not yet known, and there are many subjects of conjecture, such as the role of the Achaeans and the causes of the decline of Crete before 1100 B.C.

Bibliography

See V. R. d'Arba Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages (1972); C. Renfrew, The Emergence of Civilisation (1972).


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Mycenaean (Mycenae or its inhabitants)
Troas (region, Troy/Asia Minor/Turkey)
Mílos (island, Greece)
Minoan civilization (civilization, ancient Greece)
Mycenaean civilization (civilization, ancient Greece)