The Greeks (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Cavemen to Kings - full transcript
They rose from nothing - and changed everything.
NARRATOR: They
rose from nothing...
and changed everything.
♪♪
HALL (off-screen): The ancient
Greeks changed the world
in about 1,000 years flat.
♪♪
HUGHES (off-screen):
This was a time and a place
when there was a collision
of ideas and inspiration
that resulted in a truly
extraordinary culture.
NARRATOR: But of all
the many great civilizations
in the ancient world,
what made this one so special?
CLINE (off-screen): People talk
about the greatness of Greece.
Why them,
why there? That's the question.
NARRATOR: And why are we,
millennia later,
so intimately linked
to the radical revolution
that took place here?
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): Ancient Greece
and our modern society are connected.
We cannot possibly
understand our society
if we do not understand how it
was born and how it developed.
NARRATOR: It's a
story for the ages...
and for today....
of attaining
greatness and losing it.
TYSON: How long did
ancient Greece last?
Was it forever? No,
it was fleeting.
KOTTARIDI: It was the beginning
of a beautiful new
era of civilization.
(tapping)
NARRATOR: It's
been nearly 2,500 years
since workers put
the finishing touches
on the Western world's
most iconic structure.
100,000 tons of
the finest marble.
More than 70,000
individual segments.
Exquisite sculptures...
all came together
in majestic symmetry
on this high rocky outcrop
to proclaim the
supremacy of Athens,
a civilization at its peak.
TYSON: To stand there,
I got a little chill.
You know,
the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
TYSON (off-screen): I would say
almost a spiritual moment for me.
HUGHES (off-screen): These
beautiful statues and monuments
declare to the world
that they have achieved
extraordinary
levels of civilization.
NARRATOR: Two and
a half millennia later,
workers are racing to
rescue the Parthenon
from the ravages of time.
Centuries of wars, earthquakes,
looting, plundering,
have taken their toll.
Yet, it still stands,
a proud reminder of
human achievement.
One that continues to inspire,
even through the
most trying of times.
Not just in Greece,
but wherever people
strive for democracy.
(shouting).
When navigating the present,
the answers often
lie in the past.
The Greek writer Herodotus,
the world's first historian,
taught us that.
MICHAEL (off-screen): There
is a great deal of continuity
from ancient Greece
to modern society.
They are part of the
same cultural continuum.
NARRATOR: The people
who raised these columns
certainly had their
share of challenges,
Tyranny and famine,
economic and
environmental collapse,
endless wars,
an abysmal human rights record.
Yet somehow they
invented everything
from science and philosophy
to drama and democracy.
Greece, not Egypt,
not Persia, not Rome,
became the cornerstone
of Western civilization.
The question is, how?
HALL: If we don't ask
them how they did it
and why they did it,
then we are not even attempting
to understand the
world as a whole.
NARRATOR: It turns
out the Greeks themselves
were seeking to understand
their extraordinary rise
long before we were.
Greek myths tell us they
were born out of chaos,
quite literally,
"chaos" being the Greek word
for chasm or void.
From the void at the
dawn of the universe
arose Gods like Gaia,
Earth...
Uranus...
Sky...
Tartarus, the underworld...
and Eros, love.
Through a violent succession
of infanticide and patricide,
jealousy, deceit, and revenge,
this first generation
of divinities
gave rise to the
Gods of Olympus,
Zeus, Poseidon, Hades,
Athena, and all the others.
And ultimately,
that godforsaken mortal species,
humans, to toil away on Earth.
Yet the myths also
tell of one figure
who took pity on us humans,
rescued us from oblivion,
and paid the price for it.
♪♪
The Greek playwright Aeschylus
wrote of this hero's travails
at the height of
Greece's Golden Age
more than 2,500 years ago.
His name was Prometheus.
The play, Prometheus Bound.
Tonight,
nearly 6,000 people file into a theater
as old as drama itself,
the Epidaurus,
to experience it just as
their ancestors would have.
(applause)
(Nousias speaking Greek)
NARRATOR: Tasos
Nousias plays the leading role.
NOUSIAS (off-screen):
Prometheus is a titan, he is a God.
Zeus had decided
to eradicate mankind.
NOUSIAS (off-screen): Prometheus is
the one who stands up for the people.
Without him,
mankind would be lost.
HALL: So he actually
steals fire from Olympus.
Humans haven't got it.
They are still living
in horrible caves,
they've got no heat,
they've got no light,
they can't make anything new,
they can't cook.
HALL (off-screen):
And he gives them fire,
and of course that is the
precise inflammatory moment
when the human race takes off,
and they started
inventing everything.
♪♪
NARRATOR: With fire,
the rebellious Prometheus
endows mortals with all
the elements of civilization.
There was farming...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen): They
had no sign of winter, or flowery spring,
or fruitful summer,
until I taught them to note
the risings and
settings of the stars.
NARRATOR: Science...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen): Yes,
and numbers, the basis of science,
I invented for them.
NARRATOR: Language...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen):
And the combining of letters,
mother of the muses' arts,
with which to hold
all things in memory.
NARRATOR: Literature,
philosophy, democracy, drama.
When this play first debuted,
they were all just making
their grand entrances
onto the world stage.
♪♪
HALL (off-screen): Prometheus,
of course, suffers terribly,
and Zeus attaches
him to a mountain
and he has an eagle to
chew at his liver in, in posterity.
But inside every
ancient Greek head
was the idea that if
somebody was trying
to deprive you of something
that would help you,
you could go get it,
so that is this rebellious
spirit of the ancient Greeks
incarnate in an
ancient titan god.
(speaking Greek)
HUGHES (off-screen): What
the author Aeschylus was telling us
is that humans should use
their wits and their wisdom
and their will to try to
make their own lives better.
NARRATOR: Of course,
this play came at the peak
of Greece's Golden Age.
By then, even the ancients knew
that their many achievements
weren't simply
gifts from the gods.
They were hard
earned over generations.
The true story behind
their dramatic rise
lies beyond the myths
and begins many
thousands of years earlier...
when, as Prometheus tells us...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen):
They had no knowledge
of houses built of bricks,
nor how to work in wood,
but lived underground
like swarming ants
in sunless caves.
PARKINSON (off-screen): Classical
Greece didn't just come out of nowhere.
If you really want to understand
where the Greece of Athens,
the Greece of the
Acropolis came from,
you need to look
way back in the past.
PARKINSON (off-screen): You need
to look several thousand years back
in the past at places like this.
♪♪
NARRATOR: This
is Alepotrypa Cave
on Southern Greece's
Mani Peninsula,
a cave used by some of
the earliest farmers in Europe.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen):
It is very important site.
It's the richest cave in Greece
and one of the
richest in Europe.
NARRATOR: Some have suggested
it was the mythical
gateway to Hades,
the Greek underworld,
and it's easy to see why.
In various pockets
all around this nearly
1,000-foot long cavern,
scientists have exhumed
more than 150 bodies.
♪♪
Archaeologists
Anastasia Papathanasiou
and Bill Parkinson
continue to find more.
PARKINSON (off-screen): From 8,000
years ago until about 5,000 years ago,
agricultural villagers, farmers,
some of the first
farmers in Europe,
buried their dead in here.
They carried out
ritual activities here,
and these are the people
who eventually
laid the foundation
for what became
classical Greece.
NARRATOR: Compared
to other ancient civilizations,
it seems the people here
in Greece never had it easy.
The cave provides a
window into a key period
in human history, the Neolithic.
(grunting)
When by around 10,000 years ago,
humans first started to give
up hunting and gathering,
and began settling down.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen):
It's the first time period in human life
that the people,
they start living in a way like us.
(moos)
They are agriculturalists.
They base their diet mostly
on grains like us today.
NARRATOR: Depending
on where you lived
and what resources
you had access to,
some societies
during the Neolithic
were much more primed
for greatness than others.
The Egyptians had their Nile.
Its predictable floods
became the lifeblood
of the fertile crescent,
as did the Tigris and
Euphrates to the North.
Here fertile plains fed
booming populations,
allowing expansive
Mesopotamian civilizations
to flourish.
Further East,
Indian civilizations thrived
in the valley carved
by the Indus River.
While the Yellow River gave rise
to the first Chinese
settlements and dynasties.
In Southern Greece,
people weren't quite so fortunate.
There was no mighty river,
no nutrient-rich soil.
Here, as an ancient saying goes,
the Gods threw
down a pile of rocks.
PARKINSON (off-screen): Parts
of Greece are extremely rocky.
You know,
you basically have mountains and sea.
There's very little arable land,
there aren't many flat spaces.
It's kind of hard as a
farmer to eke a living
out of that environment.
NARRATOR: Just
outside of Alepotrypa Cave,
new finds tell a dark tale
about how difficult life here
in the Neolithic was.
PARKINSON: How we doing?
NARRATOR: Parkinson and his team
have uncovered the skeleton
of an infant and a young couple
in a tender embrace.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
We've got at least two,
probably three individuals,
right, because we've got,
we've got fragments of a fifth leg.
MAN: All right.
NARRATOR: With resources scarce,
it seems competition was fierce.
PARKINSON (off-screen): Together,
so we can understand all of it.
NARRATOR: Nearly a third
of the people discovered here
suffered blunt force trauma,
likely the result of tribal wars
over resources or territory.
Average life span
was just 29 years.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen):
They had lots of physical stress.
Their diet wasn't optimal.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen): They have
a low content of iron and animal protein.
We have high infant mortality.
NARRATOR: Taken together,
the skeletons
reveal a bleak picture
for these early Greeks.
By the time the cave collapsed
around 5,000 years ago,
the nearby settlements
were collapsing along with it.
The Greeks may have
become nothing more
than a historical footnote
were it not for one obvious,
albeit forbidding, advantage.
HUGHES (off-screen): There is
an interesting thing about Greece
is that wherever you are,
you are never more than
50 miles away from the sea,
so the sea,
you can almost see and hear it.
It is part of your experience.
♪♪
NARRATOR: With
its inlets and islands,
Greece has one of
the highest proportions
of coastline to
land area on Earth.
And with such limited resources,
the sea became a lifeline.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): Having
to survive in a very difficult environment
made people stronger.
It made people tough,
it made people defiant.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen):
It made people turn to the sea.
HALL: The Greeks
were actually forced
by their own terrain into
becoming brilliant navigators
very, very early on.
NARRATOR: Some of the
earliest archaeological evidence
of their voyages dates to
more than 10,000 years ago,
when a type of
highly prized obsidian
found only on the
volcanic island of Milos,
turned up on mainland Greece.
Milos is just one in a
circular cluster of islands
in the Aegean Sea,
aptly named the Cyclades.
CARLSON (off-screen): These islands,
on a very practical level,
made it possible
for the first seafarers
to navigate around the Aegean
to basically island-hop the
same way tourists do today,
and that played a
really pivotal role
in the development of Greece.
PARKINSON (off-screen): One
of the critical things that happens
is the development
of a new kind of boat.
It's called a longboat,
and this lets you
move way more stuff.
You can go way further.
NARRATOR: In
addition to obsidian,
longboats allowed
early mariners here
to haul resources like silver,
copper, lead,
and marble around the Aegean.
By 3200 B.C.,
people had settled the islands,
and a new culture was born.
The Cycladic people,
as they've come to be known,
would put their mineral
resources to exquisite use,
carving intricate marble
statues and figurines,
some of them life size.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
Some people think they're deities.
They might be gods,
they might be
representations of goddesses.
We know that they have
some sort of a ritual connotation,
and that's because they're
almost all from burials.
NARRATOR: Whatever the intent,
their minimalist,
abstract features
would echo through the ages,
inspiring the likes of
Picasso and Modigliani.
But beyond their art,
the Cycladic people may have left
an even more indelible legacy
on the creation of Greece.
Their islands became a crossroads of goods,
ideas,
and cultures bridging the
entire eastern Mediterranean.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
They're living on these islands,
they rely on the sea,
they know the sea.
And because of the seafaring
skills that they developed,
they're all of the sudden
plugged into this huge network
that's linking all of the
eastern Mediterranean together,
and that's about to
become hugely important.
NARRATOR: Especially
around 5,000 years ago
when the Stone Age
gave way to the Bronze,
and the world's
first global economy.
Today it's oil that makes
the world go round.
But back then,
the economy was driven by an amalgamation
of 90% copper to 10% tin,
heated to a blistering
1,100 degrees Celsius.
PARKINSON (off-screen): When
you mix that copper with another alloy,
another kind of metal,
it becomes hard.
Now you can start
to use it for weapons,
you can start to use
it for functional tools.
NARRATOR:
Versatile as bronze was,
few had the copper
or tin to produce it.
CLINE (off-screen): The
copper is mostly from Cyprus.
That's where we've got the name,
in fact, Kypros.
The majority of tin
in the Bronze Age
is coming from what we
would call Afghanistan today.
CLINE (off-screen): That's
a trip of thousands of miles.
NARRATOR: Demand for
bronze spawned trading networks
from Egypt and the Middle
East all the way to Italy,
with goods like gold,
ivory, and pottery
being exchanged
for copper and tin.
Much like today,
the Mediterranean became
a shipping superhighway.
HUGHES: There's a
kind of vogue for the idea
of globalization,
but I tell you that is nothing new.
This was a very
globalized world.
NARRATOR: With their central
location and command of the sea,
early Greeks would
have been well positioned
to partake in this
Bronze Age trade.
But archaeological
evidence of their involvement
can be hard to come by.
Much of it lies at
the bottom of the sea.
One treasure trove of
clues has been the Uluburun,
one of the oldest,
most complete shipwrecks
ever discovered.
She went down in the
eastern Aegean in the heyday
of the Bronze Age
around 3,500 years ago.
Underwater archaeologists
at the Institute of
Nautical Archaeology
in Bodrum, Turkey,
have been diving on
the site since the 1980s.
So far, they've recovered
nearly 20,000 artifacts...
including over 100 amphorae,
the shipping containers
of the ancient world...
and enough copper and
tin to yield 11 tons of bronze.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): We are
lucky that they sank and we found them.
NARRATOR: Tuba Ekmekci
directs the research center.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): It
is like a time-capsule ship
loaded on one date and
starts sailing and sank.
So everything belongs one date.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): The
copper was coming from Cyprus,
the tin was coming
from Afghanistan area.
NARRATOR: There
was amber from the Baltic,
ebony and ivory from Africa,
and glass ingots from Egypt.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): It was
like a United Nations, everywhere.
Think about this,
all these objects
coming from completely
different places
and got together in one boat.
NARRATOR: In all,
the ship was carrying some 20 tons
of luxury goods
and raw materials
from nearly a dozen
different ancient cultures,
the most revealing snapshot
we have of Bronze Age trade.
And many believe she was
headed for the Aegean Islands.
CLINE: One of the
questions that we ask
is of course what would
the rest of the world
possibly want from
Greece at this time?
(seabirds calling)
NARRATOR: Trade fueled the
most powerful Bronze Age civilizations,
and the early Greeks
would have needed
to bring something to the table.
The first clues about
what they offered
came from one of
the largest islands
in the Mediterranean, Crete,
where by around 2,000 B.C.,
a new dominant culture
had overtaken the
people of the Cyclades.
Though they left behind
some of the most extraordinary
palaces in antiquity...
who they were,
where they came from,
and what language they
spoke are still a mystery.
Even the name modern day
archaeologists ascribed to them
comes from Greek mythology.
The Minoans from Minos,
the infamous King of Crete.
During his reign,
King Minos exacted a gruesome tax
on prisoners and
innocents alike,
casting them into a
treacherous labyrinth
in the depths of his palace.
There,
they'd face a frightening beast,
the half-man,
half-bull, Minotaur...
which would devour them whole.
Archaeological evidence,
however,
is painting a very
different picture
of the people who lived here.
VLAZAKI: The Minoans developed
the first great European civilization.
VLAZAKI (off-screen): They
came into contact early on
with the great palaces of
Egypt and Mesopotamia,
and they in turn
founded great palaces.
NARRATOR: The Egyptians had
a big head start on the Minoans,
having built their great
pyramids and Sphinx
some 500 years earlier.
But by 2000 B.C.,
as goods and people
were moving around
the Mediterranean,
inspired Minoans began raising
majestic structures
of their own.
Palaces like this one at Knossos,
the ancient capital,
were astonishingly advanced.
Complete with paved streets,
the first in Europe,
flush toilets and
a sewer system.
HUGHES (off-screen): This
is a very early civilization,
and yet if you walk
through the palaces
that the Minoans created,
you're passing through
the most exquisite artifacts
and architecture that
you would still be pushed
to try find around you
in the modern world.
They created buildings that
had anti-earthquake engineering,
beautiful fine teacups
that are as fine as the kind
of greatest Chinese porcelain,
amazing gold jewelry and
earrings and necklaces.
HUGHES (off-screen): So this is
an incredibly sophisticated culture.
NARRATOR: And with the
Minoans' command of the sea,
this culture didn't
stay on Crete.
The Minoans took over many
of the nearby Cycladic Islands,
including Santorini.
Today, of course,
the island is a major
tourist destination.
Back then,
it was a strategic trading post
that gave the Minoans
access to powerful neighbors.
But to play in the big leagues
with the likes of the Hittite
Empire in Mesopotamia
or the Egyptians,
the Minoans would have to offer
more than fancy
pots and jewelry.
CLINE: If you look to the Egypt
and the eastern Mediterranean,
what do you find
that is from Greece?
Well,
you find a lot of their pottery.
NARRATOR: And
inside the pottery?
CLINE (off-screen):
Probably some of it is perfume.
Wine is certainly not
out of the question.
♪♪
NARRATOR: And one other
commodity that to this day
speaks to Greek ingenuity
and resourcefulness.
About an hour's
drive from Knossos,
Stelios Kaliouris' family
has been cultivating
olive trees for generations.
Olive oil practically flows
through people's veins on Crete.
It's used in soaps, medicines,
for storing foods,
even christening babies.
And it was every
bit as desirable
back in the Bronze Age.
But starting and
tending olive groves
isn't nearly as easy
as Stelios makes it look.
HALL (off-screen): It's an
incredible amount of physical labor,
and it takes many
years to settle in
before you get a
really good crop.
So what this required of
the ancient Greeks was, was,
was considerable planning.
HALL (off-screen): You
might never see a decent crop.
It would be your
grandson who did
before it started
taking any profit.
NARRATOR: Only an innovative,
resourceful,
and patient people
were able to unlock
the olive's potential
and reap the rewards.
HALL (off-screen): The olive is
fundamental to the ancient Greek
and indeed,
the modern Greek identity.
It's also good for trading with.
NARRATOR: Demand for
Minoan olive oil was so high,
once it began flowing,
it bankrolled their civilization.
HALL (off-screen): So the olive,
one way or another,
tells you a very great deal
about the Greek
personality and intellect.
NARRATOR: And thanks to
another great Minoan creation,
we get a vivid depiction of
what Minoan life was like.
HUGHES (off-screen): Amazing
frescoes describing their world
and their ideas
about both culture
and about the Gods around them.
NARRATOR: The frescoes
depicted a world of plenty,
with strong, youthful heroes,
bountiful wildlife,
lush landscapes,
and vivid illustrations
of how the Minoans interacted
with and tamed the sea.
VLAZAKI (off-screen): When
civilization is under development,
they do more things,
not just to eat and to
put clothes on them.
Minoans developed a nice life,
a way to live
better than before.
TYSON (off-screen): Successful
civilizations are the ones
that manage to
bestow upon its citizenry
the luxury of time that enabled
them to think about things
other than their own survival.
NARRATOR: Minoan
frescoes became the envy
of the Mediterranean world.
Their remnants have
been found as far away
as Egypt, Israel and Turkey.
CLINE (off-screen): We don't'
know that they are actually made
by people from Crete
or if they are locals
that are trained in that style.
You really can't tell.
But definitely either
the artists themselves
are being sent around
or maybe people from the
Near East that went to Crete
learned how to paint in that
style and then come back.
NARRATOR: However it happened,
this kind of exchange
represents a crucial
moment for the world.
COSMOPOULOS: So when
you travel to other places,
you don't just
bring back products.
You bring back also ideas.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
Interaction is absolutely critical
for innovation.
When cultures come into contact
and are exchanging information,
that creates new information.
It sort of builds on itself.
NARRATOR: It's clear the
Minoans were key players
in this globalized idea trade...
but their role in Greece's
rise didn't last long.
Beginning in around 1600 B.C.,
right at the height
of their civilization,
life began to crumble.
For years, the leading theory
for the Minoans' collapse
was that they were brought down
by a massive volcanic
eruption on Santorini.
The eruption left behind
the familiar Crater Bay
we see here today.
It was even offered up as proof
for the myth of Atlantis.
But more recent evidence
reveals the volcano
did not wipe out the
Minoans completely.
Excavations on Crete
indicate they were still thriving
for another 100 years
after Santorini exploded.
The more likely culprit is
less cataclysmic perhaps,
but more insidious.
Long before
Santorini blew her top,
a fresco discovered here at
Akrotiri suggests the Minoans
may have suffered
a more violent fate.
The fresco depicts an invasion.
With the Minoans falling victim
to some of the ancient
world's fiercest warriors.
Donning their trademark
boar tusk helmets,
these were the Mycenaeans,
the next people to carry
the torch of Greek civilization.
Their kingdoms, centered here
at Mycenae on mainland Greece,
are the stuff of legend.
Hundreds of years later,
they would be forever immortalized
in paintings and in epic poems
like the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Not to mention countless
Hollywood revivals.
It was all inspired by this
Mycenaean age of heroes.
There was Helen of Troy.
HELEN: Beware the
Greeks bearing gifts.
NARRATOR: And Agamemnon.
MAN (off-screen):
I will kill thee.
AGAMEMNON (off-screen): So shall we all,
brother.
NARRATOR: And
who could forget...
MAN (off-screen): The
invulnerable Achilles.
HUGHES: This was kind
of one of the first drafts
on Greekness, and,
and they were extraordinary.
They lived extraordinary,
exciting, sumptuous lives,
and I'm sure that the later
Greeks heard stories about them
and were constantly
trying to live up
to that which had gone
before to this age of heroes.
NARRATOR: But long before
the Mycenaeans became legend,
they first had to
oust the Minoans.
It's not clear how they did it,
whether through a
series of brutal invasions
or just a gradual
takeover and assimilation.
But one thing is clear
throughout Greek history,
the culture always
seems to carry through.
SHELTON: Early on,
you can see that the Mycenaeans
are really in awe of
what the Minoans have,
and in some cases I would say they,
they even imitate them.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): We
have cases where Mycenaean rulers
will decorate their houses,
their, their palaces if you want,
with wall paintings and frescoes
inspired from the Minoans,
or they will import
Minoan luxury items
as signs of their connection
with the more sophisticated
and powerful culture.
NARRATOR: And the
Mycenaeans didn't limit
these cultural
appropriations to the Minoans.
Their beehive-shaped
burial mounds at Mycenae,
for example,
resemble underground tombs from Egypt.
Mycenae's famed Lion's Gate
mimics the sculpted lions
flanking the ancient
Hittite capital at Hattusa.
SHELTON (off-screen): The
Mycenaeans were always good
at combining
things that they liked.
They were able to be inspired
and even take elements
from other cultures,
but combine them with their own.
NARRATOR: But when
it came to the Minoans,
the Mycenaeans did
more than just borrow.
Mycenaean kings took
over Minoan palaces,
including Knossos.
They dominated
the Minoans at sea,
commandeering
their trade routes.
Before long,
the Minoans faded into history,
while the Mycenaeans flourished,
expanding their civilization
around the Aegean.
And the way they held this
vast network of states together
was with one final Minoan appropriation,
writing.
Minoans wrote using hieroglyphs,
much like the Egyptians,
in a script archaeologists
call "Linear A."
Texts have been found all
over palaces like Knossos,
but unfortunately not enough
to decipher what they say.
In perhaps their smartest
appropriation of all,
the Mycenaeans took
the Linear A symbols,
adapted them into a new
script known as "Linear B"
and began using it to jot down
words in their own language.
Deciphered in the mid-1950s,
we now know Linear B
is an early form of
the Greek language.
And since language is the
key definer of a civilization,
we can now designate
the Mycenaeans
as the first true Greeks.
Thousands of years later,
we're still finding and
reading their early texts.
On the southwest
coast of Greece,
the town of Pylos straddles
both myth and history.
In Homer's Odyssey,
this is where Telemachus,
son of the famed Odysseus,
first puts to shore in
search of his father.
Odysseus had been
MIA for the last ten years
since fighting the Trojan War.
To help him find his dad,
the Goddess Athena
sent Telemachus to seek the
counsel of wise King Nestor,
who served with
Odysseus in Troy.
And for the last seven decades,
high on a cliff outside
of modern day Pylos,
archaeologists have been
digging up Nestor's palace.
Alongside vats of wine and
thousands of ancient cups,
Nestor seems to have
thrown a good party,
were 1,000-odd Linear
B tablet fragments.
But Shari Stocker,
lead excavator here,
explains they were a
far cry from epic poetry.
STOCKER: The Linear B
tablets are mostly lists of things,
What people bring to the palace,
what they owe to the palace,
things that are
donated to the gods.
NARRATOR: Offerings
to Zeus and Hermes...
goods like olives,
barley, goats, and wine.
Writing in these early days
was the equivalent
of census records
and product inventories,
scratched into clay
by ancient accountants
to administer society.
STOCKER (off-screen): They
were never meant to be preserved.
They were recorded on clay,
but it was raw clay,
so at the end of each season,
they could just
put them in water
and, you know,
reform the clay and make new tablets.
NARRATOR: In fact,
the only tablets to survive
are the ones that
were discarded,
accidentally baked and hardened
in burning ancient trash heaps,
or when a palace was
burnt and destroyed.
STOCKER: So it's
purely happenstance
that we have this
archive preserved.
NARRATOR: Recently,
one such piece of ancient trash
found at a small
town called Iklaina,
about 24 miles north of Pylos,
became archaeologist
Michael Cosmopoulos' treasure.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): Big box,
tiny tablet.
WOMAN (off-screen): Whoa.
WOMAN (off-screen):
Isn't it gorgeous?
NARRATOR: It may
not look like much,
but this is the oldest piece of
Greek writing ever discovered.
The earliest writing sample
from mainland Europe,
dating to the 15th century B.C.
Like all the other
Linear B tablets,
it's not the words that
have everyone here excited.
On one side there's a man's name,
"Latukos,"
followed by the number one.
The other side contains
what seems to be a heading
for a list of goods.
But that the tablet
was found here at all,
way out in the boonies,
is a big surprise.
SHELMERDINE (off-screen): This
is small and there is only one of it.
But it is the only tablet
that has ever been
found at a town site
instead of a palace site
on the Greek mainland.
NARRATOR: Until now,
we thought that writing
was only used in major
cities like Pylos and Mycenae,
that no one else
could read or write.
COSMOPOULOS: Part of the stone.
WOMAN: I don't think
its part of the stone.
NARRATOR: But the
Iklaina tablet shows otherwise
and that has
broader implications.
With writing in more common use,
the reach of Mycenaean kingdoms
may have been much more
extensive and advanced.
Rulers weren't just recording
the comings and goings
of goods and workers
at their palaces.
Writing had given them
control over a much wider,
more sophisticated network,
allowing them to keep
track of communities
much farther afield.
SHELMERDINE (off-screen):
If you see written administration,
you know that you
have hit the big time.
That's when we start
to talk about states
and complex bureaucracy.
NARRATOR: For Cosmopoulos' team,
this tiny piece of
clay offers evidence
of an important turning
point for Western civilization,
the birth of states.
COSMOPOULOS: We
live in a world of states,
but it wasn't always like this.
The transition from
a world without states
to a world where states
dominate every aspect of our life,
it's one of the most
fascinating chapters
in human history.
NARRATOR: Through Iklaina,
we get a sense
for how states in early
Greece came together,
as bigger cities started
taking over less powerful ones.
COSMOPOULOS: This was a city.
This was a city
that in many ways
was similar to the
cities that we have today.
For example, there was an
area with government buildings,
which is where we
are standing right now,
and the town,
the residential quarters, the houses,
sprawled all around this area.
NARRATOR: There was running water,
extensive roads,
and massive stone walls,
thought by later Greeks
to have been built
by the mythical Cyclops.
Cosmopoulos
suspects the thriving city
must have been enticing,
and that it wasn't long
before it was overtaken
by a more powerful
king based in Pylos.
COSMOPOULOS: With
every territory that he annexed,
his state expanded,
became more complex.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen):
You have the central capital, Tituk,
and then a number of district,
semi-independent, capitals.
This is the hypothesis
that we are working on.
NARRATOR: The Mycenaeans
likely went on absorbing
cities and territories
across Greece in this way
as they expanded their empire.
By around 1200 B.C.,
they'd earned their
legendary reputation.
For those at the top,
life was good.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): If
you were a member of the upper class,
it would have been wonderful
because you would live in a
palatial residence, a mansion.
Likely you would have slaves.
NARRATOR: But Bronze Age
prosperity hardly trickled down.
HUGHES (off-screen): So this
was not in any way egalitarian.
It was only a certain tiny,
tiny, tiny percentage
of the Greeks who
were benefiting.
It is almost so perfect for so few,
it's bound to collapse.
NARRATOR: And collapse it did.
If there were
headlines in 1200 B.C.,
they would sound freakishly
familiar to ours today.
CLINE (off-screen): We
have drought. We have famine.
We've got earthquakes.
We have invaders,
we have internal rebellions.
NARRATOR: There were even
mystery warriors from the sea,
according to ancient texts.
And some, or all of these,
brought the Mycenaeans
to their knees.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen):
Civilization is obliterated.
Little by little,
the Mycenaean capitals
are either abandoned
or some of them are
destroyed violently.
By approximately 1000 B.C.,
the Mycenaean civilization
is a thing of the past.
NARRATOR: And the devastation
wasn't confined to Greece.
Once the dominoes began to fall,
the globalized Bronze Age
world would never be the same.
CLINE (off-screen): We've got a
systems collapse, is what we've got here.
Over a period of 200 years,
you go from the
height of civilization
to almost absolutely nothing.
(screaming)
The great empires are gone.
No more Hittites,
no more Assyrians,
no more Babylonians.
Even the Egyptians
have been so weakened
that they are just a shadow
of what they had once been.
NARRATOR: It was the
worst collapse in human history.
We weren't back to
living in caves exactly,
but civilization
suffered a tragic blow.
Those gifts Prometheus had
endowed upon the Greeks,
writing, science, art,
were all but extinguished.
CLINE: So we get what we
refer to as the first Dark Ages.
CLINE (off-screen): And out of that,
they have to climb back up.
They will. We are going
to get classical Greece.
We are going to get Athens
and Sparta and democracy.
But it is going to take a while.
(applause)
NARRATOR: The opulent
Bronze Age was over,
but the lights didn't go
out on Greece completely.
Were it not for these dark times,
in fact,
the Greeks might
never have achieved
the Golden Age to come.
VLAZAKI: We have
the great destructions,
but in the universe,
one civilization ends and
another rises from the ashes.
NARRATOR: Like the
mythical Greek Phoenix,
out of the ashes of
palaces and kingdoms
would rise a new civilization.
And this time the gods'
gifts wouldn't be reserved
for a select few elite.
They'd be available to everyone.
HUGHES (off-screen): It is very
rarely that there is a total disaster.
As a species,
we are very good at finding the benefit,
of managing to kind
of make things better
even if it can take us quite
a few centuries to do that.
NARRATOR: Born out of chaos,
delivered from caves,
tested by the sea...
and forged in an age
of heroes and bronze,
these restless, resourceful,
innovative people
would finally be free
to carry the torch of
progress on their own.
rose from nothing...
and changed everything.
♪♪
HALL (off-screen): The ancient
Greeks changed the world
in about 1,000 years flat.
♪♪
HUGHES (off-screen):
This was a time and a place
when there was a collision
of ideas and inspiration
that resulted in a truly
extraordinary culture.
NARRATOR: But of all
the many great civilizations
in the ancient world,
what made this one so special?
CLINE (off-screen): People talk
about the greatness of Greece.
Why them,
why there? That's the question.
NARRATOR: And why are we,
millennia later,
so intimately linked
to the radical revolution
that took place here?
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): Ancient Greece
and our modern society are connected.
We cannot possibly
understand our society
if we do not understand how it
was born and how it developed.
NARRATOR: It's a
story for the ages...
and for today....
of attaining
greatness and losing it.
TYSON: How long did
ancient Greece last?
Was it forever? No,
it was fleeting.
KOTTARIDI: It was the beginning
of a beautiful new
era of civilization.
(tapping)
NARRATOR: It's
been nearly 2,500 years
since workers put
the finishing touches
on the Western world's
most iconic structure.
100,000 tons of
the finest marble.
More than 70,000
individual segments.
Exquisite sculptures...
all came together
in majestic symmetry
on this high rocky outcrop
to proclaim the
supremacy of Athens,
a civilization at its peak.
TYSON: To stand there,
I got a little chill.
You know,
the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
TYSON (off-screen): I would say
almost a spiritual moment for me.
HUGHES (off-screen): These
beautiful statues and monuments
declare to the world
that they have achieved
extraordinary
levels of civilization.
NARRATOR: Two and
a half millennia later,
workers are racing to
rescue the Parthenon
from the ravages of time.
Centuries of wars, earthquakes,
looting, plundering,
have taken their toll.
Yet, it still stands,
a proud reminder of
human achievement.
One that continues to inspire,
even through the
most trying of times.
Not just in Greece,
but wherever people
strive for democracy.
(shouting).
When navigating the present,
the answers often
lie in the past.
The Greek writer Herodotus,
the world's first historian,
taught us that.
MICHAEL (off-screen): There
is a great deal of continuity
from ancient Greece
to modern society.
They are part of the
same cultural continuum.
NARRATOR: The people
who raised these columns
certainly had their
share of challenges,
Tyranny and famine,
economic and
environmental collapse,
endless wars,
an abysmal human rights record.
Yet somehow they
invented everything
from science and philosophy
to drama and democracy.
Greece, not Egypt,
not Persia, not Rome,
became the cornerstone
of Western civilization.
The question is, how?
HALL: If we don't ask
them how they did it
and why they did it,
then we are not even attempting
to understand the
world as a whole.
NARRATOR: It turns
out the Greeks themselves
were seeking to understand
their extraordinary rise
long before we were.
Greek myths tell us they
were born out of chaos,
quite literally,
"chaos" being the Greek word
for chasm or void.
From the void at the
dawn of the universe
arose Gods like Gaia,
Earth...
Uranus...
Sky...
Tartarus, the underworld...
and Eros, love.
Through a violent succession
of infanticide and patricide,
jealousy, deceit, and revenge,
this first generation
of divinities
gave rise to the
Gods of Olympus,
Zeus, Poseidon, Hades,
Athena, and all the others.
And ultimately,
that godforsaken mortal species,
humans, to toil away on Earth.
Yet the myths also
tell of one figure
who took pity on us humans,
rescued us from oblivion,
and paid the price for it.
♪♪
The Greek playwright Aeschylus
wrote of this hero's travails
at the height of
Greece's Golden Age
more than 2,500 years ago.
His name was Prometheus.
The play, Prometheus Bound.
Tonight,
nearly 6,000 people file into a theater
as old as drama itself,
the Epidaurus,
to experience it just as
their ancestors would have.
(applause)
(Nousias speaking Greek)
NARRATOR: Tasos
Nousias plays the leading role.
NOUSIAS (off-screen):
Prometheus is a titan, he is a God.
Zeus had decided
to eradicate mankind.
NOUSIAS (off-screen): Prometheus is
the one who stands up for the people.
Without him,
mankind would be lost.
HALL: So he actually
steals fire from Olympus.
Humans haven't got it.
They are still living
in horrible caves,
they've got no heat,
they've got no light,
they can't make anything new,
they can't cook.
HALL (off-screen):
And he gives them fire,
and of course that is the
precise inflammatory moment
when the human race takes off,
and they started
inventing everything.
♪♪
NARRATOR: With fire,
the rebellious Prometheus
endows mortals with all
the elements of civilization.
There was farming...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen): They
had no sign of winter, or flowery spring,
or fruitful summer,
until I taught them to note
the risings and
settings of the stars.
NARRATOR: Science...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen): Yes,
and numbers, the basis of science,
I invented for them.
NARRATOR: Language...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen):
And the combining of letters,
mother of the muses' arts,
with which to hold
all things in memory.
NARRATOR: Literature,
philosophy, democracy, drama.
When this play first debuted,
they were all just making
their grand entrances
onto the world stage.
♪♪
HALL (off-screen): Prometheus,
of course, suffers terribly,
and Zeus attaches
him to a mountain
and he has an eagle to
chew at his liver in, in posterity.
But inside every
ancient Greek head
was the idea that if
somebody was trying
to deprive you of something
that would help you,
you could go get it,
so that is this rebellious
spirit of the ancient Greeks
incarnate in an
ancient titan god.
(speaking Greek)
HUGHES (off-screen): What
the author Aeschylus was telling us
is that humans should use
their wits and their wisdom
and their will to try to
make their own lives better.
NARRATOR: Of course,
this play came at the peak
of Greece's Golden Age.
By then, even the ancients knew
that their many achievements
weren't simply
gifts from the gods.
They were hard
earned over generations.
The true story behind
their dramatic rise
lies beyond the myths
and begins many
thousands of years earlier...
when, as Prometheus tells us...
PROMETHEUS (off-screen):
They had no knowledge
of houses built of bricks,
nor how to work in wood,
but lived underground
like swarming ants
in sunless caves.
PARKINSON (off-screen): Classical
Greece didn't just come out of nowhere.
If you really want to understand
where the Greece of Athens,
the Greece of the
Acropolis came from,
you need to look
way back in the past.
PARKINSON (off-screen): You need
to look several thousand years back
in the past at places like this.
♪♪
NARRATOR: This
is Alepotrypa Cave
on Southern Greece's
Mani Peninsula,
a cave used by some of
the earliest farmers in Europe.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen):
It is very important site.
It's the richest cave in Greece
and one of the
richest in Europe.
NARRATOR: Some have suggested
it was the mythical
gateway to Hades,
the Greek underworld,
and it's easy to see why.
In various pockets
all around this nearly
1,000-foot long cavern,
scientists have exhumed
more than 150 bodies.
♪♪
Archaeologists
Anastasia Papathanasiou
and Bill Parkinson
continue to find more.
PARKINSON (off-screen): From 8,000
years ago until about 5,000 years ago,
agricultural villagers, farmers,
some of the first
farmers in Europe,
buried their dead in here.
They carried out
ritual activities here,
and these are the people
who eventually
laid the foundation
for what became
classical Greece.
NARRATOR: Compared
to other ancient civilizations,
it seems the people here
in Greece never had it easy.
The cave provides a
window into a key period
in human history, the Neolithic.
(grunting)
When by around 10,000 years ago,
humans first started to give
up hunting and gathering,
and began settling down.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen):
It's the first time period in human life
that the people,
they start living in a way like us.
(moos)
They are agriculturalists.
They base their diet mostly
on grains like us today.
NARRATOR: Depending
on where you lived
and what resources
you had access to,
some societies
during the Neolithic
were much more primed
for greatness than others.
The Egyptians had their Nile.
Its predictable floods
became the lifeblood
of the fertile crescent,
as did the Tigris and
Euphrates to the North.
Here fertile plains fed
booming populations,
allowing expansive
Mesopotamian civilizations
to flourish.
Further East,
Indian civilizations thrived
in the valley carved
by the Indus River.
While the Yellow River gave rise
to the first Chinese
settlements and dynasties.
In Southern Greece,
people weren't quite so fortunate.
There was no mighty river,
no nutrient-rich soil.
Here, as an ancient saying goes,
the Gods threw
down a pile of rocks.
PARKINSON (off-screen): Parts
of Greece are extremely rocky.
You know,
you basically have mountains and sea.
There's very little arable land,
there aren't many flat spaces.
It's kind of hard as a
farmer to eke a living
out of that environment.
NARRATOR: Just
outside of Alepotrypa Cave,
new finds tell a dark tale
about how difficult life here
in the Neolithic was.
PARKINSON: How we doing?
NARRATOR: Parkinson and his team
have uncovered the skeleton
of an infant and a young couple
in a tender embrace.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
We've got at least two,
probably three individuals,
right, because we've got,
we've got fragments of a fifth leg.
MAN: All right.
NARRATOR: With resources scarce,
it seems competition was fierce.
PARKINSON (off-screen): Together,
so we can understand all of it.
NARRATOR: Nearly a third
of the people discovered here
suffered blunt force trauma,
likely the result of tribal wars
over resources or territory.
Average life span
was just 29 years.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen):
They had lots of physical stress.
Their diet wasn't optimal.
PAPATHANASIOU (off-screen): They have
a low content of iron and animal protein.
We have high infant mortality.
NARRATOR: Taken together,
the skeletons
reveal a bleak picture
for these early Greeks.
By the time the cave collapsed
around 5,000 years ago,
the nearby settlements
were collapsing along with it.
The Greeks may have
become nothing more
than a historical footnote
were it not for one obvious,
albeit forbidding, advantage.
HUGHES (off-screen): There is
an interesting thing about Greece
is that wherever you are,
you are never more than
50 miles away from the sea,
so the sea,
you can almost see and hear it.
It is part of your experience.
♪♪
NARRATOR: With
its inlets and islands,
Greece has one of
the highest proportions
of coastline to
land area on Earth.
And with such limited resources,
the sea became a lifeline.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): Having
to survive in a very difficult environment
made people stronger.
It made people tough,
it made people defiant.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen):
It made people turn to the sea.
HALL: The Greeks
were actually forced
by their own terrain into
becoming brilliant navigators
very, very early on.
NARRATOR: Some of the
earliest archaeological evidence
of their voyages dates to
more than 10,000 years ago,
when a type of
highly prized obsidian
found only on the
volcanic island of Milos,
turned up on mainland Greece.
Milos is just one in a
circular cluster of islands
in the Aegean Sea,
aptly named the Cyclades.
CARLSON (off-screen): These islands,
on a very practical level,
made it possible
for the first seafarers
to navigate around the Aegean
to basically island-hop the
same way tourists do today,
and that played a
really pivotal role
in the development of Greece.
PARKINSON (off-screen): One
of the critical things that happens
is the development
of a new kind of boat.
It's called a longboat,
and this lets you
move way more stuff.
You can go way further.
NARRATOR: In
addition to obsidian,
longboats allowed
early mariners here
to haul resources like silver,
copper, lead,
and marble around the Aegean.
By 3200 B.C.,
people had settled the islands,
and a new culture was born.
The Cycladic people,
as they've come to be known,
would put their mineral
resources to exquisite use,
carving intricate marble
statues and figurines,
some of them life size.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
Some people think they're deities.
They might be gods,
they might be
representations of goddesses.
We know that they have
some sort of a ritual connotation,
and that's because they're
almost all from burials.
NARRATOR: Whatever the intent,
their minimalist,
abstract features
would echo through the ages,
inspiring the likes of
Picasso and Modigliani.
But beyond their art,
the Cycladic people may have left
an even more indelible legacy
on the creation of Greece.
Their islands became a crossroads of goods,
ideas,
and cultures bridging the
entire eastern Mediterranean.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
They're living on these islands,
they rely on the sea,
they know the sea.
And because of the seafaring
skills that they developed,
they're all of the sudden
plugged into this huge network
that's linking all of the
eastern Mediterranean together,
and that's about to
become hugely important.
NARRATOR: Especially
around 5,000 years ago
when the Stone Age
gave way to the Bronze,
and the world's
first global economy.
Today it's oil that makes
the world go round.
But back then,
the economy was driven by an amalgamation
of 90% copper to 10% tin,
heated to a blistering
1,100 degrees Celsius.
PARKINSON (off-screen): When
you mix that copper with another alloy,
another kind of metal,
it becomes hard.
Now you can start
to use it for weapons,
you can start to use
it for functional tools.
NARRATOR:
Versatile as bronze was,
few had the copper
or tin to produce it.
CLINE (off-screen): The
copper is mostly from Cyprus.
That's where we've got the name,
in fact, Kypros.
The majority of tin
in the Bronze Age
is coming from what we
would call Afghanistan today.
CLINE (off-screen): That's
a trip of thousands of miles.
NARRATOR: Demand for
bronze spawned trading networks
from Egypt and the Middle
East all the way to Italy,
with goods like gold,
ivory, and pottery
being exchanged
for copper and tin.
Much like today,
the Mediterranean became
a shipping superhighway.
HUGHES: There's a
kind of vogue for the idea
of globalization,
but I tell you that is nothing new.
This was a very
globalized world.
NARRATOR: With their central
location and command of the sea,
early Greeks would
have been well positioned
to partake in this
Bronze Age trade.
But archaeological
evidence of their involvement
can be hard to come by.
Much of it lies at
the bottom of the sea.
One treasure trove of
clues has been the Uluburun,
one of the oldest,
most complete shipwrecks
ever discovered.
She went down in the
eastern Aegean in the heyday
of the Bronze Age
around 3,500 years ago.
Underwater archaeologists
at the Institute of
Nautical Archaeology
in Bodrum, Turkey,
have been diving on
the site since the 1980s.
So far, they've recovered
nearly 20,000 artifacts...
including over 100 amphorae,
the shipping containers
of the ancient world...
and enough copper and
tin to yield 11 tons of bronze.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): We are
lucky that they sank and we found them.
NARRATOR: Tuba Ekmekci
directs the research center.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): It
is like a time-capsule ship
loaded on one date and
starts sailing and sank.
So everything belongs one date.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): The
copper was coming from Cyprus,
the tin was coming
from Afghanistan area.
NARRATOR: There
was amber from the Baltic,
ebony and ivory from Africa,
and glass ingots from Egypt.
EKMEKCI (off-screen): It was
like a United Nations, everywhere.
Think about this,
all these objects
coming from completely
different places
and got together in one boat.
NARRATOR: In all,
the ship was carrying some 20 tons
of luxury goods
and raw materials
from nearly a dozen
different ancient cultures,
the most revealing snapshot
we have of Bronze Age trade.
And many believe she was
headed for the Aegean Islands.
CLINE: One of the
questions that we ask
is of course what would
the rest of the world
possibly want from
Greece at this time?
(seabirds calling)
NARRATOR: Trade fueled the
most powerful Bronze Age civilizations,
and the early Greeks
would have needed
to bring something to the table.
The first clues about
what they offered
came from one of
the largest islands
in the Mediterranean, Crete,
where by around 2,000 B.C.,
a new dominant culture
had overtaken the
people of the Cyclades.
Though they left behind
some of the most extraordinary
palaces in antiquity...
who they were,
where they came from,
and what language they
spoke are still a mystery.
Even the name modern day
archaeologists ascribed to them
comes from Greek mythology.
The Minoans from Minos,
the infamous King of Crete.
During his reign,
King Minos exacted a gruesome tax
on prisoners and
innocents alike,
casting them into a
treacherous labyrinth
in the depths of his palace.
There,
they'd face a frightening beast,
the half-man,
half-bull, Minotaur...
which would devour them whole.
Archaeological evidence,
however,
is painting a very
different picture
of the people who lived here.
VLAZAKI: The Minoans developed
the first great European civilization.
VLAZAKI (off-screen): They
came into contact early on
with the great palaces of
Egypt and Mesopotamia,
and they in turn
founded great palaces.
NARRATOR: The Egyptians had
a big head start on the Minoans,
having built their great
pyramids and Sphinx
some 500 years earlier.
But by 2000 B.C.,
as goods and people
were moving around
the Mediterranean,
inspired Minoans began raising
majestic structures
of their own.
Palaces like this one at Knossos,
the ancient capital,
were astonishingly advanced.
Complete with paved streets,
the first in Europe,
flush toilets and
a sewer system.
HUGHES (off-screen): This
is a very early civilization,
and yet if you walk
through the palaces
that the Minoans created,
you're passing through
the most exquisite artifacts
and architecture that
you would still be pushed
to try find around you
in the modern world.
They created buildings that
had anti-earthquake engineering,
beautiful fine teacups
that are as fine as the kind
of greatest Chinese porcelain,
amazing gold jewelry and
earrings and necklaces.
HUGHES (off-screen): So this is
an incredibly sophisticated culture.
NARRATOR: And with the
Minoans' command of the sea,
this culture didn't
stay on Crete.
The Minoans took over many
of the nearby Cycladic Islands,
including Santorini.
Today, of course,
the island is a major
tourist destination.
Back then,
it was a strategic trading post
that gave the Minoans
access to powerful neighbors.
But to play in the big leagues
with the likes of the Hittite
Empire in Mesopotamia
or the Egyptians,
the Minoans would have to offer
more than fancy
pots and jewelry.
CLINE: If you look to the Egypt
and the eastern Mediterranean,
what do you find
that is from Greece?
Well,
you find a lot of their pottery.
NARRATOR: And
inside the pottery?
CLINE (off-screen):
Probably some of it is perfume.
Wine is certainly not
out of the question.
♪♪
NARRATOR: And one other
commodity that to this day
speaks to Greek ingenuity
and resourcefulness.
About an hour's
drive from Knossos,
Stelios Kaliouris' family
has been cultivating
olive trees for generations.
Olive oil practically flows
through people's veins on Crete.
It's used in soaps, medicines,
for storing foods,
even christening babies.
And it was every
bit as desirable
back in the Bronze Age.
But starting and
tending olive groves
isn't nearly as easy
as Stelios makes it look.
HALL (off-screen): It's an
incredible amount of physical labor,
and it takes many
years to settle in
before you get a
really good crop.
So what this required of
the ancient Greeks was, was,
was considerable planning.
HALL (off-screen): You
might never see a decent crop.
It would be your
grandson who did
before it started
taking any profit.
NARRATOR: Only an innovative,
resourceful,
and patient people
were able to unlock
the olive's potential
and reap the rewards.
HALL (off-screen): The olive is
fundamental to the ancient Greek
and indeed,
the modern Greek identity.
It's also good for trading with.
NARRATOR: Demand for
Minoan olive oil was so high,
once it began flowing,
it bankrolled their civilization.
HALL (off-screen): So the olive,
one way or another,
tells you a very great deal
about the Greek
personality and intellect.
NARRATOR: And thanks to
another great Minoan creation,
we get a vivid depiction of
what Minoan life was like.
HUGHES (off-screen): Amazing
frescoes describing their world
and their ideas
about both culture
and about the Gods around them.
NARRATOR: The frescoes
depicted a world of plenty,
with strong, youthful heroes,
bountiful wildlife,
lush landscapes,
and vivid illustrations
of how the Minoans interacted
with and tamed the sea.
VLAZAKI (off-screen): When
civilization is under development,
they do more things,
not just to eat and to
put clothes on them.
Minoans developed a nice life,
a way to live
better than before.
TYSON (off-screen): Successful
civilizations are the ones
that manage to
bestow upon its citizenry
the luxury of time that enabled
them to think about things
other than their own survival.
NARRATOR: Minoan
frescoes became the envy
of the Mediterranean world.
Their remnants have
been found as far away
as Egypt, Israel and Turkey.
CLINE (off-screen): We don't'
know that they are actually made
by people from Crete
or if they are locals
that are trained in that style.
You really can't tell.
But definitely either
the artists themselves
are being sent around
or maybe people from the
Near East that went to Crete
learned how to paint in that
style and then come back.
NARRATOR: However it happened,
this kind of exchange
represents a crucial
moment for the world.
COSMOPOULOS: So when
you travel to other places,
you don't just
bring back products.
You bring back also ideas.
PARKINSON (off-screen):
Interaction is absolutely critical
for innovation.
When cultures come into contact
and are exchanging information,
that creates new information.
It sort of builds on itself.
NARRATOR: It's clear the
Minoans were key players
in this globalized idea trade...
but their role in Greece's
rise didn't last long.
Beginning in around 1600 B.C.,
right at the height
of their civilization,
life began to crumble.
For years, the leading theory
for the Minoans' collapse
was that they were brought down
by a massive volcanic
eruption on Santorini.
The eruption left behind
the familiar Crater Bay
we see here today.
It was even offered up as proof
for the myth of Atlantis.
But more recent evidence
reveals the volcano
did not wipe out the
Minoans completely.
Excavations on Crete
indicate they were still thriving
for another 100 years
after Santorini exploded.
The more likely culprit is
less cataclysmic perhaps,
but more insidious.
Long before
Santorini blew her top,
a fresco discovered here at
Akrotiri suggests the Minoans
may have suffered
a more violent fate.
The fresco depicts an invasion.
With the Minoans falling victim
to some of the ancient
world's fiercest warriors.
Donning their trademark
boar tusk helmets,
these were the Mycenaeans,
the next people to carry
the torch of Greek civilization.
Their kingdoms, centered here
at Mycenae on mainland Greece,
are the stuff of legend.
Hundreds of years later,
they would be forever immortalized
in paintings and in epic poems
like the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Not to mention countless
Hollywood revivals.
It was all inspired by this
Mycenaean age of heroes.
There was Helen of Troy.
HELEN: Beware the
Greeks bearing gifts.
NARRATOR: And Agamemnon.
MAN (off-screen):
I will kill thee.
AGAMEMNON (off-screen): So shall we all,
brother.
NARRATOR: And
who could forget...
MAN (off-screen): The
invulnerable Achilles.
HUGHES: This was kind
of one of the first drafts
on Greekness, and,
and they were extraordinary.
They lived extraordinary,
exciting, sumptuous lives,
and I'm sure that the later
Greeks heard stories about them
and were constantly
trying to live up
to that which had gone
before to this age of heroes.
NARRATOR: But long before
the Mycenaeans became legend,
they first had to
oust the Minoans.
It's not clear how they did it,
whether through a
series of brutal invasions
or just a gradual
takeover and assimilation.
But one thing is clear
throughout Greek history,
the culture always
seems to carry through.
SHELTON: Early on,
you can see that the Mycenaeans
are really in awe of
what the Minoans have,
and in some cases I would say they,
they even imitate them.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): We
have cases where Mycenaean rulers
will decorate their houses,
their, their palaces if you want,
with wall paintings and frescoes
inspired from the Minoans,
or they will import
Minoan luxury items
as signs of their connection
with the more sophisticated
and powerful culture.
NARRATOR: And the
Mycenaeans didn't limit
these cultural
appropriations to the Minoans.
Their beehive-shaped
burial mounds at Mycenae,
for example,
resemble underground tombs from Egypt.
Mycenae's famed Lion's Gate
mimics the sculpted lions
flanking the ancient
Hittite capital at Hattusa.
SHELTON (off-screen): The
Mycenaeans were always good
at combining
things that they liked.
They were able to be inspired
and even take elements
from other cultures,
but combine them with their own.
NARRATOR: But when
it came to the Minoans,
the Mycenaeans did
more than just borrow.
Mycenaean kings took
over Minoan palaces,
including Knossos.
They dominated
the Minoans at sea,
commandeering
their trade routes.
Before long,
the Minoans faded into history,
while the Mycenaeans flourished,
expanding their civilization
around the Aegean.
And the way they held this
vast network of states together
was with one final Minoan appropriation,
writing.
Minoans wrote using hieroglyphs,
much like the Egyptians,
in a script archaeologists
call "Linear A."
Texts have been found all
over palaces like Knossos,
but unfortunately not enough
to decipher what they say.
In perhaps their smartest
appropriation of all,
the Mycenaeans took
the Linear A symbols,
adapted them into a new
script known as "Linear B"
and began using it to jot down
words in their own language.
Deciphered in the mid-1950s,
we now know Linear B
is an early form of
the Greek language.
And since language is the
key definer of a civilization,
we can now designate
the Mycenaeans
as the first true Greeks.
Thousands of years later,
we're still finding and
reading their early texts.
On the southwest
coast of Greece,
the town of Pylos straddles
both myth and history.
In Homer's Odyssey,
this is where Telemachus,
son of the famed Odysseus,
first puts to shore in
search of his father.
Odysseus had been
MIA for the last ten years
since fighting the Trojan War.
To help him find his dad,
the Goddess Athena
sent Telemachus to seek the
counsel of wise King Nestor,
who served with
Odysseus in Troy.
And for the last seven decades,
high on a cliff outside
of modern day Pylos,
archaeologists have been
digging up Nestor's palace.
Alongside vats of wine and
thousands of ancient cups,
Nestor seems to have
thrown a good party,
were 1,000-odd Linear
B tablet fragments.
But Shari Stocker,
lead excavator here,
explains they were a
far cry from epic poetry.
STOCKER: The Linear B
tablets are mostly lists of things,
What people bring to the palace,
what they owe to the palace,
things that are
donated to the gods.
NARRATOR: Offerings
to Zeus and Hermes...
goods like olives,
barley, goats, and wine.
Writing in these early days
was the equivalent
of census records
and product inventories,
scratched into clay
by ancient accountants
to administer society.
STOCKER (off-screen): They
were never meant to be preserved.
They were recorded on clay,
but it was raw clay,
so at the end of each season,
they could just
put them in water
and, you know,
reform the clay and make new tablets.
NARRATOR: In fact,
the only tablets to survive
are the ones that
were discarded,
accidentally baked and hardened
in burning ancient trash heaps,
or when a palace was
burnt and destroyed.
STOCKER: So it's
purely happenstance
that we have this
archive preserved.
NARRATOR: Recently,
one such piece of ancient trash
found at a small
town called Iklaina,
about 24 miles north of Pylos,
became archaeologist
Michael Cosmopoulos' treasure.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): Big box,
tiny tablet.
WOMAN (off-screen): Whoa.
WOMAN (off-screen):
Isn't it gorgeous?
NARRATOR: It may
not look like much,
but this is the oldest piece of
Greek writing ever discovered.
The earliest writing sample
from mainland Europe,
dating to the 15th century B.C.
Like all the other
Linear B tablets,
it's not the words that
have everyone here excited.
On one side there's a man's name,
"Latukos,"
followed by the number one.
The other side contains
what seems to be a heading
for a list of goods.
But that the tablet
was found here at all,
way out in the boonies,
is a big surprise.
SHELMERDINE (off-screen): This
is small and there is only one of it.
But it is the only tablet
that has ever been
found at a town site
instead of a palace site
on the Greek mainland.
NARRATOR: Until now,
we thought that writing
was only used in major
cities like Pylos and Mycenae,
that no one else
could read or write.
COSMOPOULOS: Part of the stone.
WOMAN: I don't think
its part of the stone.
NARRATOR: But the
Iklaina tablet shows otherwise
and that has
broader implications.
With writing in more common use,
the reach of Mycenaean kingdoms
may have been much more
extensive and advanced.
Rulers weren't just recording
the comings and goings
of goods and workers
at their palaces.
Writing had given them
control over a much wider,
more sophisticated network,
allowing them to keep
track of communities
much farther afield.
SHELMERDINE (off-screen):
If you see written administration,
you know that you
have hit the big time.
That's when we start
to talk about states
and complex bureaucracy.
NARRATOR: For Cosmopoulos' team,
this tiny piece of
clay offers evidence
of an important turning
point for Western civilization,
the birth of states.
COSMOPOULOS: We
live in a world of states,
but it wasn't always like this.
The transition from
a world without states
to a world where states
dominate every aspect of our life,
it's one of the most
fascinating chapters
in human history.
NARRATOR: Through Iklaina,
we get a sense
for how states in early
Greece came together,
as bigger cities started
taking over less powerful ones.
COSMOPOULOS: This was a city.
This was a city
that in many ways
was similar to the
cities that we have today.
For example, there was an
area with government buildings,
which is where we
are standing right now,
and the town,
the residential quarters, the houses,
sprawled all around this area.
NARRATOR: There was running water,
extensive roads,
and massive stone walls,
thought by later Greeks
to have been built
by the mythical Cyclops.
Cosmopoulos
suspects the thriving city
must have been enticing,
and that it wasn't long
before it was overtaken
by a more powerful
king based in Pylos.
COSMOPOULOS: With
every territory that he annexed,
his state expanded,
became more complex.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen):
You have the central capital, Tituk,
and then a number of district,
semi-independent, capitals.
This is the hypothesis
that we are working on.
NARRATOR: The Mycenaeans
likely went on absorbing
cities and territories
across Greece in this way
as they expanded their empire.
By around 1200 B.C.,
they'd earned their
legendary reputation.
For those at the top,
life was good.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen): If
you were a member of the upper class,
it would have been wonderful
because you would live in a
palatial residence, a mansion.
Likely you would have slaves.
NARRATOR: But Bronze Age
prosperity hardly trickled down.
HUGHES (off-screen): So this
was not in any way egalitarian.
It was only a certain tiny,
tiny, tiny percentage
of the Greeks who
were benefiting.
It is almost so perfect for so few,
it's bound to collapse.
NARRATOR: And collapse it did.
If there were
headlines in 1200 B.C.,
they would sound freakishly
familiar to ours today.
CLINE (off-screen): We
have drought. We have famine.
We've got earthquakes.
We have invaders,
we have internal rebellions.
NARRATOR: There were even
mystery warriors from the sea,
according to ancient texts.
And some, or all of these,
brought the Mycenaeans
to their knees.
COSMOPOULOS (off-screen):
Civilization is obliterated.
Little by little,
the Mycenaean capitals
are either abandoned
or some of them are
destroyed violently.
By approximately 1000 B.C.,
the Mycenaean civilization
is a thing of the past.
NARRATOR: And the devastation
wasn't confined to Greece.
Once the dominoes began to fall,
the globalized Bronze Age
world would never be the same.
CLINE (off-screen): We've got a
systems collapse, is what we've got here.
Over a period of 200 years,
you go from the
height of civilization
to almost absolutely nothing.
(screaming)
The great empires are gone.
No more Hittites,
no more Assyrians,
no more Babylonians.
Even the Egyptians
have been so weakened
that they are just a shadow
of what they had once been.
NARRATOR: It was the
worst collapse in human history.
We weren't back to
living in caves exactly,
but civilization
suffered a tragic blow.
Those gifts Prometheus had
endowed upon the Greeks,
writing, science, art,
were all but extinguished.
CLINE: So we get what we
refer to as the first Dark Ages.
CLINE (off-screen): And out of that,
they have to climb back up.
They will. We are going
to get classical Greece.
We are going to get Athens
and Sparta and democracy.
But it is going to take a while.
(applause)
NARRATOR: The opulent
Bronze Age was over,
but the lights didn't go
out on Greece completely.
Were it not for these dark times,
in fact,
the Greeks might
never have achieved
the Golden Age to come.
VLAZAKI: We have
the great destructions,
but in the universe,
one civilization ends and
another rises from the ashes.
NARRATOR: Like the
mythical Greek Phoenix,
out of the ashes of
palaces and kingdoms
would rise a new civilization.
And this time the gods'
gifts wouldn't be reserved
for a select few elite.
They'd be available to everyone.
HUGHES (off-screen): It is very
rarely that there is a total disaster.
As a species,
we are very good at finding the benefit,
of managing to kind
of make things better
even if it can take us quite
a few centuries to do that.
NARRATOR: Born out of chaos,
delivered from caves,
tested by the sea...
and forged in an age
of heroes and bronze,
these restless, resourceful,
innovative people
would finally be free
to carry the torch of
progress on their own.