🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Linear B was deciphered only in 1952 by Michael Ventris.
Mycenaean centers like Mycenae and Pylos flourished in the Late Bronze Age around 1300 BCE. Their palatial complexes managed trade, agriculture, and craft production through a writing system known as Linear B. Around 1200 BCE, these centers were destroyed during the broader Bronze Age collapse. Administrative hubs burned, and palace economies disintegrated. With bureaucratic systems gone, writing ceased in mainland Greece. For roughly 400 years, there is no evidence of literacy in the region. This period is often called the Greek Dark Age. Urban complexity shrank dramatically.
💥 Impact (click to read)
The disappearance of writing reveals how tightly literacy was tied to palace administration. Linear B was not used for poetry or personal letters; it was an accounting tool. When the mega-cities fell, the need for that script evaporated. Knowledge transmission reverted to oral tradition. Monumental architecture ceased. Trade networks diminished. Civilization did not vanish, but its scale contracted.
When writing reappeared centuries later, it used a different alphabet influenced by Phoenician traders. The collapse reset cultural development. The epics of Homer likely emerged from oral traditions shaped in this period of decentralization. The fall of palace cities thus indirectly shaped Western literature. A collapse created a creative vacuum. Sometimes, forgetting is part of history’s redesign.
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