“Unraveling the Mysteries: What Sparked the Dawn of Ancient Greece?”
Unlike copper ore, iron ore is native to Greece. Iron was already known during the Mycenean age, but the wealth of the Myceneans kept the bronze trade alive. It was only during the dark age, when importing bronze was no longer an option that small iron ore mines popped up around Greece. The adoption of iron was a slow process, and wouldn’t pick up steam for a while. Iron tools allowed for techniques that increased the quality of the pottery and the intricacies of the designs. Outside of pottery, iron obviously made better tools for farming and violence. As Iron began to proliferate around Greece, production by craftspeople and farmers became easier and the people started to grow in wealth and even begin trading again.
The booming economic prosperity would lead to a larger population and creeping wealth inequality. Not every son could inherit land. This may have been one of the factors of the foundation of so many Greek colonies across the Mediterranean. Chiefs leading expeditions assigned farmland to volunteers.
With this spread we have to talk about the Greek language itself. There are four main dialects in ancient Greek. Athenians spoke Attic Greek, as did the Ionians in Western Anatolia. Spartans spoke Doric, which was one of the West Greek dialects. Myceneans’ Linear B preserved a dialect that was part of the Arcadio-Cypriot dialect. There was no correct Greek, all these dialects are considered subsets of the Greek language. To the ancient Greeks, these accents were mutually intelligible. If you look at a map of where these dialects lie, you will see that Greek speaking areas around the Mediterranean are not uniform. Different dialects aren’t necessarily grouped together but are spread out like patchwork. Close neighbors spoke different accents while distant peoples sometimes spoke the same accent. This had a big part to play in Greek identity and politics and was partially the basis of alliances in later wars. For example, in the Greco-Persian wars Athens was interested in siding with the Ionians partially because of this. In the Peloponnesian wars, Dorics allied together under Sparta.
