King Minos and his Minotaur.... notes

King Minos was said to have a Minotaur which he kept in a labrynth. King Minos was the king of Crete a and some Islands in the Agean sea. Pottery from the Minoan culture has a lot of pottery that has a lot of bull heads that relate to the Minotaur. After a while there is no trace of the Minoan culture. Theories that point to what happened to the Minoans is war, disease, or an earthquake. After they disappeared there was confusion as to who owned the Agean sea, the Myceneans took over. This started the Bronze Age.

The City of Mycean was more like a castle on the top of a hill. Below at the bottom of the hill was the burial grounds. The emblem of the Myceans was the Lion gate, the gate into Mycean has two lions on oppisite sides of a pillar. Around 1100 B.c. we lose track of Mycenae. This is called the dark period.

Around 900 B.c we enter the Geometric period. It is called this because of the type of pottery they had. The Greeks used great pieces of pottery that would tell stories, this pottery was used as grave markers. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/04/eusb/ho_14.130.14.htm. The geometric period lasted 200 years.

After this was the Archaic period meaning the Old period. 700-480 bc. Here the Greeks stopped using pottery as grave markers and started using statues of people. If you were a hero and you died in war, your grave marker would be like that. Dying in war was the greatest way to die to the Greeks and those who were great warriors and died in war have monuments built to them. The first Tyrant was Spartan called Lycurgus, he set up laws and made sure they were kept.

Persians ! :O

The Persians wanted to take over Greece, who is normally at war but they reunite against Persia. The Persians had defeated several of the Greek city states already and were coming to Athens, which if taken would be the end all for Greece. The battle of Thermopalae which is kind of like a valley. There were 7000 troops of Greeks blocking a path blocking the entire Persian Army. The fought there for three days, and every single Greek who fought there died. Athens was able to be evacuated by the time the Persians got to Athens. When the Persians got there they were angry and burned the Acropolis and destroy Athens. The Athenians who were in Salamis baited the Persians to Salamis. They took the bait and went to Salamis and were defeated by the Athenians and their allies. Battle at Salamis.