The Bronze Age, a period that lasted roughly three thousand years, saw major advances in social, economic, and technological advances that made Greece the hub of activity in the Mediterranean. Historians have identified three distinct civilizations to identify the people of the time. These civilizations overlap in time and coincide with the major geographic regions of the Greece.
The Cycladic civilization developed in the islands of the Aegean, and more specifically around the Cyclades, while the Minoans occupied the large island of Crete. At the same time, the civilization of the Greek mainland is classified as “Helladic”.
The Mycenaean era describes Helladic civilization towards the end of the 11th c. BCE and is also the called “Age of Heroes” because it is the source of the mythological heroes and epics like Hercules, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
All three civilizations of the Bronze Age had many characteristics in common, while at the same time were distinct in their culture and disposition. The Minoans are considered to be the first advanced civilization of Europe, while Mycenaean culture had a great deal of influence with its legends and Greek language on what later became the splendor of Classical Greece.