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[Mick Harper]

1250 BC King of Sparta's wife abducted ... Trojan War .... end of Mycaeneans

1100 BC Dorians sweep down from the north

In Sparta by contrast the Dorians kept power to themselves and constituted themselves into a ruling military class.

[Boreades]

These militarized Dorian aristocracies deliberately “froze” an archaic form of society (and sacrificed most of their cultural and artistic promise in the process) in order to maintain dominance over a larger population of serfs.

Dorian = Norman?

[hvered]

Were you thinking perhaps of Dorian Gray? Really, how can historians believe such gobbets about maintaining an entire society in a state of frozen suspension for three hundred years and then everyone wakes up and carries on as if nothing had happened.

[Boreades]

As if nothing had happened?

It makes a change from a Dark Age?

[hvered]

As the authors of the excellent Centuries of Darkness put it

By the beginning of the 11th century BC Mycenaean civilization had collapsed. Many theories have been put forward to explain this dramatic downfall. Explanations vary from the straightforward, exremplified by the ever-popular hypothesis of an invasion of Dorians, incomers from the north, through to attempts to apply extremely complex and abstract mathematical models.

The "eventless and mysterious Dark Age" of poor old Greece fills the historical lacuna but then, miraculously, as the same authors discover

when the recession finally ended the new Greek society displayed many 'old' Mycenaean features preserved through a supposedly considerable time-span.

[TisILeclerc]

Unless of course the Greeks were not in Greece at the time and came later from their Atlantic homelands as Iman Wilkens maintains. And he was only picking up on earlier beliefs.

With the latest discoveries in Cambridgeshire of 'Mediterranean' products and weaponry it may well be that the whole of 'Greek' civilisation had its start in England and the countries bordering the North Sea and Atlantic.

http://troy-in-england.com/default.htm

http://troy-in-england.com/id3.htm

Another interesting clue given by Homer is the frequent indication of oceanic tides, as tides are insignificant in the Mediterranean. Already Strabo wrote that 'Homer was not unfamiliar with tides and that for this reason several of the places described by the poet should be sought in the Atlantic Ocean'.

[Boreades]

One of my neighbours is called Dorian, but he's from Wales.

Perhaps the Dorians stopped in Wales for a while, on their way from Doggerland to Greece? ;-)

[TisILeclerc]

Or from Dorset.

And Corinth Cornwall. Ionians from Iona. Hellenes from Helston. Myceneans from Macclesfield.

Of course Paris was a Yorkshireman from Humberside. Had a whole tribe named after him.

Achilles from Eccles or Ecclefechan perhaps or even Achiltibuie.



And here's a proud Macedonian in his kilt and bonnet. Or should that be Mac a'Dunian or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fustanell ... alis-1.jpg

[hvered]

Your hypotheses are as good as theirs. For my money the Dorians are entirely invented. It's too far back to expect to find surviving literary references but to find no traces after an occupation lasting three hundred or so years, archaeological remains at the very least, seems quite ludicrous.

Why 'Dorians'? I know Classicists are notorious for coming up with labels but it's impossible to fathom their psyches. Possibly a hint of l'Age D'Or (though why blame a 'golden race' for a dark age?) or more in context a name-link to Doric architecture which everyone's vaguely heard of. Never mind that the Doric stuff is about four hundred years later. As the Century of Darkness puts it, Mycenaean archaeology is more representative of 700 BC than 1200 BC.

[TisILeclerc]

Curiouser and curiouser.

It appears that the Achaeans in Homer were one of the names given to the Greek people.

The Achaeans (/əˈkiːənz/; Ancient Greek: Ἀχαιοί Akhaioí) constitute one of the collective names for the Greeks in Homer's Iliad (used 598 times) and Odyssey. The other common names are Danaans (/ˈdæneɪ.ənz/; Δαναοί Danaoi; used 138 times in the Iliad) and Argives (/ˈɑːrɡaɪvz/; Ἀργεῖοι Argeioi; used 182 times in the Iliad) while Panhellenes (Πανέλληνες Panhellenes) and Hellenes (/ˈhɛliːnz/;[1] Ἕλληνες Hellenes) both appear only once

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaeans_(Homer)

Now where have I heard the name Danaan before?

It seems that they were good at dolmens and cromlechs.

Dolmens and cromlechs have been found in the ancient area of Achaea dating back to the Neolithic period. Flint axes and blades fabricated from materials such as quartz or obsidian have been found in megalithic chamber tombs from this ancient region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaea_(ancient_region)#Name

Other familiar sounding place names include Arcadia (Orcadia?) and Eira which I should think doesn't need explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenia_(ancient_region)

Mind you it's all Greek to me.