004 Early Bronze Age
The History of Ancient Greece
Ryan Stitt
4.4 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2016
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the archaeological evidence for the early Bronze Age on mainland Greece and the Cycladic Islands; the arrival of the Indo-Europeans in Greece (known as the proto-Greeks); and the rediscovery and excavation of three legendary Bronze Age cities (Troy, Knossos, and Mycenae) in the latter part of the 19th century AD by the infamous Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans that brought to light the Bronze Age peoples who would become known as the "Minoans" and "Mycenaeans"
Show Notes: http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2016/04/004-early-bronze-age-greece.html
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hello and welcome back to the history of ancient Greece. Episode 4, The Early Bronze Age. |
| 0:26.1 | In this episode, we are going to discuss the next significant period |
| 0:29.0 | in Greece's developmental history, |
| 0:31.1 | the early Bronze Age, which is roughly the third millennium, BC, with the focus |
| 0:36.1 | mainly on the Cyclities and the Greek mainland. |
| 0:39.7 | With the coming of the Bronze Age, we start to get more and more material evidence, and social and economic |
| 0:45.0 | changes begin to proceed more rapidly. |
| 0:47.6 | The main reason was an increase in the use of metals, and the development of metallurgy. The transition from Neolithic to Bronze Age was not immediate, however. |
| 0:57.0 | For this reason, just like the Mesolithic period is a transition between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. |
| 1:04.0 | Some scholars have labeled the transitional period from Neolithic to Bronze Age as chacholithic, |
| 1:10.0 | from the Greek words Halchos, which is copper and lithos, stone, because copper was being used in addition to stone. |
| 1:18.0 | Since copper is a metal, it's still technically part of the early Bronze Age. |
| 1:22.0 | Anyway, the crucial next step of adding tin to the copper to produce bronze, a much harder metal, |
| 1:29.0 | was taken in the near east during the 4th Millennium BC. |
| 1:32.0 | The technology came to Greece around 3,000 BC, and by about |
| 1:36.6 | 2,500 BC, the use of bronze as well as other metals such as lead, silver, and gold, became widespread throughout Crete and the |
| 1:44.6 | Cyclades Islands in the southern of GNC. The introduction of metallurgy was a major |
| 1:50.0 | technological advancement. Devising innovative ways to alloy metals at high |
| 1:55.0 | temperatures, Aegean Smith's created new luxury goods and better tools for |
| 1:59.6 | agriculture, construction, and warfare. Weapons of bronze were considerably more lethal than those made of stone, bone, or copper. Bronze was much stronger and was able to hold a razor edge, making feasible the production of durable metal daggers, swords, and spearheads. |
| 2:16.8 | The dagger soon became standard equipment for warriors in the Bronze Age, and it eventually |
| 2:21.3 | was lengthened into swords, increasing the killing efficiency of these new weapons. |
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