Latest / The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History / The Kyklop Mura: Mycenaean Walls That Shaped Greek Identity
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about classical Athens, about the Peloponnesian War, about Philip and Alexander. But I want to take us way, way further back today — to a time before the polis, before democracy, before even the alphabet. To the Mycenaean world, the Bronze Age Greeks that Homer sang about. Luna: The ones who built those massive stone walls, right? The ones later Greeks thought only Cyclopes could have built? Lucas: Exactly. The ancient Greeks themselves looked at these walls — at Mycenae, at Tiryns, at Gla — and they just couldn't believe human hands had lifted those stones. So they called them kyklopeia teichē, Cyclopean walls. And the name stuck. We still use it today. Luna: How big are we talking? Lucas: Some of the limestone blocks at Tiryns weigh around 120 tons. That's the weight of about 60 cars. They were fitted together without mortar, just sheer precision — and they've stood for over 3,000 years. The Lion Gate at Mycenae, with those two lions carved above the lintel, that's the most iconic image of this whole culture. Lucas: Now, these weren't just walls. They were the defensive core of palace complexes — what we call megara, basically a large central hall with a hearth and a throne. The ruler, the wanax, controlled trade, stored grain and olive oil in massive pithoi jars, and administered a complex economy that we know about from Linear B tablets. Luna: Linear B — that's the script they deciphered in the 1950s, right? Lucas: Right, by Michael Ventris. And what those tablets reveal is a highly organized palatial system — records of sheep, wool, bronze, chariots, perfumed oil. The Mycenaeans were sending goods all over the Mediterranean, from Sicily to the Levant. And yet, around 1200 BCE, almost all of these palaces were destroyed or abandoned within a few generations. Luna: The Bronze Age collapse. We touched on that with the Sea Peoples. Lucas: Exactly. The collapse was part of a wider system failure across the Eastern Med — the Hittite Empire fell, Egypt was attacked, Ugarit burned. But in Greece, the memory of these massive walls didn't vanish. They remained, towering over the landscape, and later Greeks wove them into their origin stories. Lucas: So you get the myth that Perseus — yes, the Perseus who killed Medusa — founded Mycenae. And when he needed to build the walls, he summoned the Cyclopes, these one-eyed giants from Lycia, to do the work. The same story is told about Tiryns: its walls were built by the Cyclopes for King Proitos. Luna: So the Greeks themselves were already mythologizing their own past. They didn't know how the walls got there, so they invented a story. Lucas: Exactly. And that's fascinating because it shows how the physical ruins shaped Greek identity. The epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are set in this Mycenaean world — but Homer composed them centuries after the palaces fell. By then, the Greek-speakers had gone through a Dark Age, lost writing, and were slowly re-emerging into the Archaic period. Luna: So how much did Homer actually know about the Mycenaeans? Lucas: That's a great question. Homer describes bronze weapons and boar's tusk helmets, which are archaeologically attested from the Mycenaean era. But he also describes Iron Age practices — cremation burial instead of the Mycenaean tholos tombs, for instance. So his epics are a blend of memory, oral tradition, and his own times. Lucas: Speaking of tholos tombs — those are the beehive-shaped burial chambers, the most famous being the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. They're also built with Cyclopean masonry, corbelled vaults that hold up without mortar. The later Greeks thought they were treasure houses of mythical kings, but they were actually royal tombs. Luna: I remember that one — it's massive. The lintel stone is like 120 tons, right? Lucas: It is. And that's a perfect example of what we're talking about: these structures were so monumental that they generated stories. When the classical traveler Pausanias visited Mycenae in the second century CE, he described the walls and the Lion Gate, and he still called them Cyclopean. So for over a thousand years, the Greeks kept looking at them and wondering. Lucas: And now here's a thought: We've been talking about how these walls inspired myths, inspired a sense of a lost heroic age. In a way, that's what we're doing right now — telling stories about the past. And that's part of why we make this show the way we do, without ads. We think it's worth keeping this conversation purely about the history, not about selling something. Luna: Yeah, it's a choice we've made from the start. If you value that, and you want to help keep it going, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Exactly. No pressure, but for those who want to support an ad-free history show, that's the way. So — back to those walls. One of the most impressive Cyclopean sites that doesn't get as much attention is the citadel of Gla. Luna: Gla — that's in Boeotia, isn't it? Near the Copaic Lake? Lucas: That's right. It's a massive fortified enclosure, about 23 hectares, much bigger than Mycenae or Tiryns. It was built on an island in the lake — which was drained in the 19th century — and it had palaces, storerooms, and a complex water system. But unlike Mycenae, it wasn't continuously inhabited after the collapse, so its ruins are incredibly well preserved. Lucas: What's interesting about Gla is that it seems to have been a regional administrative center, possibly for the kingdom of Orchomenos. The Linear B tablets from elsewhere mention places like Thebes and Pylos, but none have been found at Gla. So we're still piecing together its role. Luna: So it's like a puzzle with missing pieces. Lucas: Exactly. And that's true for so much of the Mycenaean world. We have the walls, the tombs, the pottery, the tablets — but we don't have their songs, their myths, their spoken stories. Except through the lens of later Greeks. So what we call 'Mycenaean civilization' is really a reconstruction, a kind of archaeology of memory. Lucas: One more site I want to mention: Midea, another acropolis in the Argolid. It was excavated more recently and shows evidence of a major earthquake around 1200 BCE, maybe contributing to its destruction. That reminds us that the collapse wasn't just about invaders — it was also natural disasters, internal strife, economic breakdown. Luna: Right, it's never one single cause. Like the fall of the Bronze Age was a perfect storm. Lucas: Exactly. So when we think about these walls, they're not just old stones. They're a window into how a civilization ended — and how its memory shaped the civilization that came after. The classical Greeks saw the Lion Gate and imagined Agamemnon walking through it to lead the fleet to Troy. Whether that actually happened or not, the belief itself shaped their identity. Luna: And it shaped their art, their drama, their sense of who they were. Lucas: Yes. And that's a thread we could follow for many more episodes. Next time, I want to talk about the fall of the Mycenaean palaces in more detail — the evidence for the Dorian invasion, the Sea Peoples, and the long Dark Age that followed. Luna: I'm looking forward to that. For now, thanks for taking us back to the Bronze Age. Lucas: My pleasure. Those walls have been waiting 3,000 years for someone to tell their story.