| Helladic |
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The Helladic period is subdivided as:
The Early Helladic is marked by the arrival in Greece of an agricultural population that did not speak an Indo-European Language , whose culture soon diverged from its origins in the Cyclades . Very little is known of this society except that the basic techniques of bronze-working were first developed in Anatolia, and cultural contacts with Western Anatolia were maintained. Their arrival coincides with the beginning of the Bronze Age in Greece. The Early Helladic period corresponds in time to the Old Kingdom in Egypt . Important Early Helladic sites are clustered on the Aegean shores of the mainland in Boeotia and Argolid ( Lerna , Pefkakia , Thebes , Tiryns ) or coastal islands such as Aegina (Kolonna) and Euboea (Lefkandi, Manika) and are marked by pottery showing Western Anatolian influences and the introduction of the fast-spinning version of the Potter's Wheel . The large "longhouse" called a '' Megaron '' is introduced in EH II. The infiltration of Anatolian cultural models was not accompanied by widespread site destruction. No similar Early Helladic material has yet been positively identified in the interior of the Peloponnesus. The Middle Helladic begins with the wide-scale settlement in Greece of a people known as the Minyans , who spoke an Indo-European language; a group of monochrome burnished pottery from Middle Helladic sites was conventionally dubbed "Minyan" ware by Troy's discoverer Heinrich Schliemann . Until about 1960, Gray Minyan ware was often identified as the pottery of northern invaders who destroyed Early Helladic civilization ca. 1900 BCE and introduced Middle Helladic material culture into the Greek peninsula; excavations at Lerna have revealed the development of pottery styles to have been continuous. In general, painted pottery decors are rectilinear and abstract until Middle Helladic III, when Cycladic and Minoan influences inspire a variety of curvilinearand even representational motifs. The Middle Helladic period corresponds in time to the Middle Kingdom Of Egypt . It ends with the great explosion of the Santorini volcano. Settlements draw more closely together and tend to be sited on hilltops. Middle Helladic sites are located throughout the Peloponnese and central Greece (including sites in the interior of Aetolia such as Thermon) as far north as the Spercheios River valley. Malthi in Messenia is the only Middle Helladic site to have been thoroughly excavated, but Lerna V will be the type site when it is fully published (Rutter). The Late Helladic is the time when Mycenaean Greece flourished, under new influences from Minoan Crete and the Cyclades. During this time a language recognizable as A Form Of Greek was spoken and Cyclopean tombs and citadels were built. The Late Helladic corresponds in time to the period of the New Kingdom in Egypt . The decline of Mycenaean culture at the end of the Late Helladic heralded the start of the Greek Dark Ages . SEE ALSO
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