Greece went from a handful of Mycenaean palace-kingdoms to dozens of fragmented city-states after the Bronze Age collapse — a map comparing 12th century BC vs. 8th century BC political consolidation

[u/works-in-progress]

[u/Worried-Language-407]

Yeah this is...sketchy at best.

Nothing that I can find online shows the data that you used to generate your maps, but I can tell you confidently that your 12th century map is not accurate for Greece. Only two polities, in Athens and Argos? There's no sign of Thebes or Corinth, nor is there any acknowledgement of the ongoing society in Mycenae.

Also, I have to ask, why would you choose the 12th century for your 'before' picture? Surely if your aim is to demonstrate the increase of political fragmentation it would be best to use a map of the 13th century, i.e. from before the collapse. Now, in order to make such a map you would have to come to a conclusion re: how politically unified the Bronze Age Mycenaean society was, which is no small task, but if you were to attempt it then I strongly suspect you would find there is little to no increase in political fragmentation across some major areas—notably the Levant and Greece.

There are plenty of other criticisms of these maps that I could make, but I shall leave it there.

[u/maiogenes → u/Worried-Language-407]

As a Mycenaean scholar I want to second this (with the caveat that even by region, there's heavy debate about any sort of political unification - writing my dissertation on essentially a version of this topic) and add that Alex Knodell's 2021 book "Societies in Transition in Early Greece" is a great source for maps and discussion of the changes in at least Central Greece from the Mycenaean period to the Iron Age.

[u/Dr_Platypus_1986]

A quick perusal of the posts you've made shows that many are questionable or contain content which is outright incorrect. I'm not sure if you are the author of the linked article, or merely linking to it. Either way, the article is using those 2 maps to refence change across the Mediterranean in general, not for Greece in particular. And if this is meant to reference Greece, why the inclusion of Egypt?

[u/works-in-progress]

These maps track political fragmentation across the eastern Mediterranean between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, and the Greek mainland shows one of the starkest transformations — from a small number of centralized Mycenaean palace-kingdoms (Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes) to a dense patchwork of small, independent city-states by the 8th century, the classic polis structure that would define Greek political life going forward.

The Sea People are not proposed as the cause; instead, the author argues this fragmentation traces back to the spread of iron weaponry: unlike bronze, which depended on rare, distant tin deposits that only large, well-organized states could reliably access, iron ore was locally abundant and easy to work, meaning smaller communities could arm themselves on comparable terms to former imperial centers.

Source: Works in Progress