DORIAN HELLENIC

With the Dorian invasion between 1100 and 950 BC, which is referred to as "the return of the sons of Heracles" in mythology, ended the bronze age and the dark ages of Hellas. The invaders spoke just like the Acheans Greek, but in a different dialect. In the middle and late Helladic period they probably lived in the north and northwest, at the edge of Mycenaean civilisation. The invaders were from several different tribes, but we will call this invasion the Dorian invasion as the Dorian tribes were the most important in the course of history.

The Dorian invasion was not an organised attack from one nation on the other one. Both sides had some form of organisation, but mostly only in a very loose form. What made the Dorians decide to move downwards is impossible to say. This whole immigration of nations is covered in a thick fog. Archaeological nothing was found, we only know of it because we could trace it in a linguistic way.

The Hellas of the 11th and 12th century BC had gone very much downhill. The script, one of the cornerstones of civilisation was lost, and all once mighty cities were destroyed. The "second coming of the Greeks" gave a new impulse to culture in Hellas: people learned the art of iron-working, cremation started to replace burial, pottery was decorated with geometrical figures, and iron started to replace bronze as the main raw material for the construction of tools and weaponry.


Relocation of the tribes.
With the coming of the Dorians the pattern for the future was set in Hellas. For the rest of the classic history the Greeks were divided into four groups, not only by the dialect which they spoke, but also by the area in which they were living. While several tribes were driven through Hellas they, and with them a part of the invading Dorian tribes, realised that Hellas was not big enough for all of them, so they moved overseas.

The "return of the sons of Heracles" completly changed Greece in a cultural and geographic manner.

Immigrating Greeks met on Cyprus the Phoenician tradesmen who attempted to control the whole Mediterranean with their trade. From them the Greek learned something invaluable: the alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet, which resembled the Hebrew alphabet of the old Scripture, was changed by the Greeks until it fitted their needs.

The Dorians, together with the north-western Greeks settled down mostly in the areas at the Corinthian gulf and in the northwest of the Peloponesse. Furthermore the Dorians moved to the south and east of the Peloponesse, in the area of Megara at the Sardonic gulf, on the island Aegina in that same gulf, on the southern islands of the Aegean sea (Crete, Rhodes, and Kos), and in the southwest corner of Asia Minor.

The central mountains of the Peloponesse, Arcadia, did not get any new inhabitants. That is why the Arcadian dialect, together with the Greek dialect of Cyprus, is the closest to the original Mycenaean dialect.

Ionic Greek was spoken in Attica and Euboea, both areas where no invasion took place. However, because of the increasing population in Hellas because of the Dorian invasion many Ionic Greeks decided to move overseas nevertheless. They settled down on the islands in the centre of the Aegean sea, and on the central coasts of Asia Minor, which is known as Ionia since then. This process is known as the Ionic migration of nations, but this is not really correct as they did leave a motherland behind unlike the Dorians.

In Thessaly the original inhabitants, the Aeolians, became subjected to the invaders and many fled to northern Asia Minor (Smyrna, Cyme and Lesbos). The northern coast of Asia Minor is since then known as Aeolia. In Beotia on the other hand the invaders melted together with the original inhabitants.

Around 950 every tribe had settled down in its own territory. They co-existed besides eachother, but never formed a nation... they even almost never felt as one nation. There would always be a strong contrast between the different groups, especially between the Ionians and the Dorians. The Ionians arrived in Hellas around 1600 and mixed with the original inhabitants while the Dorians arrived 500 years later and enslaved them, without learning anything from their culture. The Dorians valued their system of tribes and remained isolated as Sparta would show later on, while the Ionians valued art, science and individualism which were the cornerstones of Athens.