Around 2000 BC the Mycenaean settle in mainland Greece. There is dominated by a warrior elite whose power is based on the military use of the car and the use of long swords. The settlement of the Mycenaeans on mainland Greece is the rupture of relations between the Minoans and the Continent.
Everything begins to change after 1850 BC when the Mycenaeans, and settled in Continental Greece, establishing peaceful contact with the Minoans on the island of Melos. The continent has begun a period of civilizing progress that leads them to seek the Mycenaeans Melos obsidian. There they meet Minoan traders who also go there in search of obsidian stone as this is a highly prized for its malleability. The first meetings of Mycenaean and Minoan trade in Melos will expand to other islands such as Rhodes.
contacts Minoan and Mycenaean are very fruitful for the latter. Cretan artists begin to come to the mainland. The Mycenaean begin to develop their culture influenced by the Minoan civilization from 1600 BC. Mycenaean culture has two phases: the period of the Shaft Graves (ca 1600 - ca 1450 BC) and the period of dome-tombs (ca 1500 - ca 1300 BC) who live together for 50 years (ca. 1500 - ca 1450 BC). During the period of the Mycenaean Shaft Graves adopted to your needs the Linear A, which is a syllabic script created by the Cretans during the time of the second palace in Minoan civilization (ca. 1700 - ca 1500 BC). Thus the Mycenaean Linear B which create the decryption from 1952 - 1953 by G. Ventris and J. Chadwick has used not only literary sources and archaeological in study of the Mycenaean civilization.
From 1600 BC the Mycenaean kingdoms began to form in mainland Greece that mimic the Cretan thalassocracy. However, there are a unitary state. Some realms are taking advantage of the hilly nature of the soil of Greece and often conflict with each other. By 1500 BC takes place tremendous volcanic explosion of Thera island called Santorini from Byzantine times to the present. It is thought that befall shake in the winter. This tidal waves destroyed the Minoan navy anchored in the ports of Crete.
The Mycenaean exploit the power vacuum to settle in Crete. Starting Knossos (the largest city of Minoan Crete.) It shows that very little time after 1500 BC, Knossos Linear B appears in other places while still using the Linear A. Around 1450 BC the Mycenaean Crete would have occupied a whole. However, the wars between the Mycenaean kingdoms are very frequent. One of them would take place to 1210 BC when the kingdom of Thebes Mycenaean hegemony attempts clinch answered by the other wa-nax (kings who live in large Mycenaean palaces). The subsequent Greek literature recalls these events in the legends of Oedipus and his family to reflect on the tragedy Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus and Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone.
Source: Homer between Mycenaean Greece and Paleoarcaica
