The Origins of Greek Civilization: 1100-650 B.C.

“A challenging thesis about Greek prehistory—that the miraculous jump into the Greece of our history was made in the eleventh century B.C., during the pre-Christian Dark Ages. . . . An exciting book to read, eloquently written and beautifully illustrated.” —The New Yorker

When the great citadel of Mycenae, then the center of the Aegean world, went up in flames about 1100 B.C., what followed was a “dark age” that left no written records. But rich archaeological records show conclusively that there was a radical discontinuity between Mycenaean-Minoan culture and Greek civilization. Chester G. Starr argues that true Greek civilization was swiftly and spontaneously generated in a remarkably autonomous renaissance during the two centuries from 850 to 650 B.C. Supporting his thesis with archaeological evidence previously unavailable to historians, he offers a masterly reconstruction of an obscure and important period of Greek history.