GREEK DARK AGES

After most of the Mycenean palaces were destroyed around 1200 BC, they were not rebuilt. The only palace we know of which was not destroyed was the one at Athens. But even Athens seems to have had a hard time for the next several hundred years. There were no more kings. Taxes were not collected. The roads were not repaired, and gradually became full of holes and could only be used for walking or riding donkeys, not for wagons. Maybe a lot of people died, because there don't seem to have been very many people living in Greece at this time. And the people who were still there were poor, and had no gold jewelry in their graves. It even seems that there were no more potters or shoemakers or other craftsmen, and people mostly had to make their own pots and other things (so the things are very badly made). Without gold, people also stopped sailing to other countries to buy things.A lot of the Ionians fled from the invaders, or just from the bad times in Greece, and moved to other places during the Dark Ages. Many of them moved to the coast of Turkey, and people began to call that place Ionia because of all the Ionians living there. Others moved to the coast of the Black Sea. Some historians think that some Greeks, or people like them, may have moved to Israel, where they were called the Philistines.