1. Dorians

2. The Dorians: Around 1200 BCE, a new group, the Dorians, came down from the north. The early tribes who lived on the Greek peninsula never really had a chance to beat the Dorians. The Mycenaeans were great warriors, but they fought with stone weapons. The newcomers, the Dorians, had iron weapons. The Mycenaeans did not have a chance of winning against such superior equipment.

3. Historians and archaeologists have found written records left by the early tribes on the Greek peninsula that tell how they tried to save their women and children by moving them from one town to another, and how they stockpiled war material in preparation for the next battle with the Dorians.

4. Around 1200 BCE, all written records stop because the Dorians had won. All written records stopped for about the next 400 years. For the next 400 years, Greece fell into a dark age.Greece fell into a dark age. The Dorians had no written language. They did not paint pictures of their life on vases and pottery. The 400 years that the Dorian people ruled ancient Greece is called the Grecian dark ages. A dark age is time a period of time in history that we usually know very little about because people did not write things down. But the Greek dark age was different. We know quite a lot about this period of time because of the storytellers. the storytellers The Dark Ages ended, around 800 BCE, with the development of the Greek city-states.

5. The Storytellers: The ancient Greeks loved stories. During the Grecian Dark Ages, some people became professional storytellers. The storytellers went from town to town, earning a living telling stories. They told the same stories over and over, and they told them in the same language, Greek. It was not long until nearly everyone in ancient Greece knew all the stories by heart. They also knew the Greek language by heart, as it was the language of the storytellers. The storytellers told three kinds of stories - fables, legends, and myths.

6. A fable is a story that ends with a lesson to be learned. Probably the most famous of all fables came out of ancient Greece during the Greek dark ages - the stories of Aesop. stories of Aesop A legend is a popular story that has been told over and over again about something that happened in the near or far past. To be a legend, there can be no proof that the story is true. That does not mean that it is not true. It only means that to be a legend, there cannot be proof that the story is true. One of the most popular legends was the story of the Trojan Horse. the Trojan Horse A myth is a story about one or more magical deities. The Greeks believed in many gods and goddesses and magical monsters and mythical animals. The Greek myths are still enjoyed today. The Greek myths

7. Before the dark ages, many different tribes of early people lived on the Greek peninsula. They did not have a common language. They did not have a common history. They did not use metal tools or weapons. Their tools and weapons were made of stone. During the 400 years of the Greek dark ages, thanks to the traveling storytellers, the Greeks developed a common spoken language, a common history composed of fables, legends, and myths, and the ability to make tools and weapons out of metal. The Mycenaeans, Dorians, Ionians, Greeks, and other tribes who lived in scattered villages throughout the Greek peninsula had gradually became one people. When the early Greek people began to organize themselves into defensible units called city-states, the days of Dorian rule came to a end. After the dark ages, things began to get lively!lively