I - 143 : The incredibly adaptive Dorians

The Lindos Acropolis dates back to the Dorian Settlement around 900 BC

For thousands of years, the Minoans lived on the island of Crete. Their palaces and culture dominated. Their mariners exported olive oil, wine and elaborate pottery to Mycenae, the Levant, Egypt and the Western Med. It was Europe’s oldest civilization with its own alphabet and destined to last forever. By 1’200 BC it was gone. Its palaces and towns deserted. No Minoan ships ploughed the sea anymore. Elaborate pottery & mural paintings disappeared. The population shrank. Crete sank into the dark ages - 400 years of little known history.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse affected the entire Middle East and the East Mediterranean

Crete was not alone in this predicament. Mycenae, the powerful Greek state which had waged war against Troy, suffered the same fate. So did the Hittites, a people ruling most of Anatolia and the Levant. The entire Middle East was in turmoil. Historians continue to argue about the cause of “1177 - The Year that Civilization collapsed”. Nobody seems to know for sure. Even rich Egypt was affected. Pharaoh Ramses II had to fight the “Sea people” who attacked his mighty kingdom. As a result, Egypt was forced to pull out of what is today Israel and the Sinai. Trade in the Mediterranean and the Middle East came to a stand still. The rare tin from Afghanistan did not arrive any longer. People had to replace their bronze tools  with iron. Iron was well known and ubiquitous but cumbersome to work with – but in the absence of tin, people had no choice. The iron age commenced.

The Dorian Expansion was probably peaceful - A People moving to empty Lands & Islands

By 800 BC, the Dorians rule Crete, as well as the Peloponnese and the Dodecanese island. Not as centralized power but as local communities and small states. Some were to become famous like Sparta, Corinth and Rhodes. Others barely remembered. Our trip this summer will be along Dorian coasts. Originally, Dorians were land lubbers with modest beginnings. The decoration on their pottery was simple – far less sophisticated that what we know from the Minoans. But - the Dorians gave us the classic Greek Gods and adopted the Phoenician alphabet. Linear A and B, the Minoan and Mycenean alphabets had been forgotten. Long-distance trading had been picked up by the Phoenicians. The Dark Ages from 1200 – 800 BC had changed everything. Nothing was like before. What had happened?

Replica of a Dorian Helmet from Corinth 500 BC

For decades, historians believed that a Dorian "invasion" caused the collapse of the Minoan and Mycenaen civilization. That is what we were taught in High School. But archeological evidence does not support this narrative. Nobody found the traces of violence such a story would entail. It almost seems that the transition was peaceful. True, dozens of towns were abandoned in the Dark Age but it seems people just left. We also know that the population numbers in Greece collapsed. Centers of knowledge simply disappeared. That is how the skills for making sophisticated pottery, the indigenous alphabet and how to build palaces and ocean-going vessels was simply forgotten.

Proto - Corinthian (Dorian) Pottery from 630 BC

In many of our previous trips along Mediterranean shores we discovered abandoned cities. Knidos and Kaunas are good examples. They were deserted between 5th and 7th century AD when the purchasing power of the Roman Empire evaporated in hyper-inflation and several plagues killed a good 1/3 of Romans. With no buyers there was no trade. Without trade, cities could not be supplied. With no food people had to leave. As the inland population shrank, it could not support its towns. Without cities, the division of labor - the base for culture and progress - had to be abandoned. No library survives when nobody maintains it. No skills in engineering or steel making are passed on to the next generation when everybody surviving has to work in the fields.

The Dark Ages in Greece and the Middle East must have had a root cause:

• A drought or other climate change that destroyed the agricultural surplus on which cultures and states in the Middle East depended

• An unknown plague which devastated a population without an adequate immune system

• The collapse of a major trading party which affected all others

There is no evidence for any of these hypothesis so far. But as there are more archeological digs, we will find the answer at some point.

The Temple of Hephaestus in Athens in Dorian Style - thanks to the Chapel inside it survived

We may know little about Greek's Dark Ages but know quite a bit about the Dorians. Only united by their common langue but never a single political entity, they were a creative, sturdy and innovative people. They learnt how to cross the sea and settled in Crete and the Dodecanese in the 10th century BC. Within less than 200 years, they copied the Phoenicians and became a naval power by themselves. The best examples is the Doric Hexapolis, a federation by the six Dorian towns of Cos, Knidos, Halicarnassus (Bodrum), Lindos (Rhodes), Italysus (Rhodes) and Camirus (Rhodes).  Knidos and Halicarnassus were conquered by the Persian Emperor Cyrus before 530 AD but – thanks to their strong fleet – the four others could protect their independence. Xerxes had to invade Rhodes during the Greek-Persian Wars in 492 BC to submit them to his rule.

Olympias is a Replicate of a 500 BC Athenian Trireme - Athenians were Ionians not Dorians but their Ships looked almost identical. Olympias is sailed here by Greek Naval Cadets.

The Dorians were not only formidable warriors and maritime traders, they were also skilled craftsmen and builders. Everybody knows about the Dorian columns and their famous pottery. Their style was adopted by everybody. Not only by the Athenians 400 BC. Just travel around the United States and you will find many public buildings with Dorian columns

The Dorians gave us both the Doric and the

Corinthian Syles - Corinth was a Dorian City

As traders and mariners, the Dorians were quick thinkers. When the Lydians in Anatolia invented coins, they imitated them within two decade. They also built magnificent temples in Knidos and Lindos and contributed the Olympic games to Greek culture. Sparta is probably the Dorian’s best known town - and most feared military power. Corinth its most prolific colonizer who set up a dozen colonies in Magna Graecia (Sicily) and today’s Albania. I think it is fair to say that there would not be classical Greece without the Dorians. It will be interesting sailing along Dorian shores this summer!

  Italysos from Rhodes 510 BC with winged Boar on

the Face and Eagle Head on the Back