Mycenaean culture did not end due to earthquakes
Posted On: Jul 10th, 2018 at 16:28
Greece
A subject right up my lions gate – the Mycenaeans, my favourite of all ancient European cultures, and certainly the most fascinating.
First, I’m here yet again to expose another error – the second picture in this article says, “Grave Circle B”. Well, first of all that clearly isn’t a circle, and neither is it a grave. It is actually a part of the palace on the upper acropolis next to the megaron, the southernmost part of the palace, facing Argos, but who’s being pedantic?
Secondly, once again I have never agreed with the supposed demise of the Mycenaeans – large earthquakes.
Are you surprised I didn’t agree? Let’s face it, I don’t agree with much, but then again my conclusions are based on common sense, an ability that seems to be lacking in many a historian or archaeologist.
Having twice visited Mycenae and Tyrins, and once to Midea, it seems clear to anyone with a brain larger than a sheep that earthquakes did not cause their demise. Why? Because firstly it’s a cliche, a cop out, rather like “climate change” or some other convenient excuse based on modern science, or in this case the fact that Greece has more than its fair share of them, and secondly the cities are largely intact. When the outer walls of a city are still in place and thus the protection of the inhabitants still apparent, why would you move elsewhere and start again in a place where there is no such security? The answer is, you don’t. You rebuild the damaged structures inside the city and stay within the protective walls. This is what I mean by ‘common sense’. Because the alternative clearly has much less common sense and a lot more work and danger.
More sensible would be a lack of water (drought), warfare, disease, and so on. A lack of water requires a lot of transportation of a heavy substance across large distances and high altitude. Warfare and disease might wipe out the population entirely. That would certainly explain a culture’s “disappearance”. I also do not like the drought theory from most civilisation-ending disasters, certainly not in a place like Greece.
So here in this article we have yet another theory, so say.
But I’m not in favour of this either. Why?
Ancient cultures were not so black and white in their existence. Life is not so black and white. But western thinking is black and white, and therein lies the problem. What was occurring during these changes was not a single event or disaster. The complexities of the changes and shifts of life patterns, warfare, control, trade, and a hundred other aspects of life are so complex there cannot possibly be one simple reason why civilisations or cultures collapse and disappear.
It is about time we stopped these simplistic articles about what may have caused this and that, especially from so-called scholars who should know better than to make what is nothing more than a suggestion, seemingly more to make a name for themselves rather than contribute anything sensible to the table. And one certainly has to question them when they take years to come to these conclusions. One wonders if they even visit these historical sites in the first place.
