This is the only chapter in this book that will not touch upon the Bronze Age. This is not because the Bronze Age Greeks had no literature, science, or philosophy. Quite to the contrary; the divine names in the Linear B texts suggest a full pantheon ripe with mythic content, just as the fabulous items of gold, silver, and bronze from that era show great familiarity with aspects of metallurgy. Likewise, the lavish funerary architecture and the vast supplies furnishing the tombs of the rich and famous hint strongly at an elaborate conception of the afterlife, thus of humanity's place in the cosmos.
The problem is that none of this has been recorded for us. The Linear B tablets that tell us the names of the deities do not record the actual myths associated with these deities. Although we know that bronzesmiths understood the working of copper and tin, we have no way of knowing why they thought these metals combined as they did to produce arms and armor. And although we may look at possible parallels in Egypt or the Levant to try to understand what the Bronze Age Minoans and Greeks believed the afterlife to be like, we have none of their own words to describe their view of these concepts. In short, we have no extensive writings, the only real means for understanding the mental workings of a society—the workings expressed through literature, science, and philosophy. The fact that this chapter begins with Homer instead of Minos does not imply that the Minoans and Mycenaeans had no intellectual accomplishments, only that they failed to record them in a way available to a twenty-first-century public.
World History
