in the Wilds of Southern Greece Olive Groves crowd on pebbl strewn Earth artifacts and masonry of all AAS nestled among the brambles and the Orchards alongside scrap metal and plastic like few other places in the world this region of the Mediterranean has a glut of evidence from the ancient world [Music] too not just settlement sites and outposts but vast metropolises of the ancestors in [Music] abundance a time when many of those settlements of antiquity surpassed modern towns in both size and and relative Splendor one of those places hidden up high on a little visited ridg
line in the South Central pelones is [Music] nioria unlike so many others in a wide Ark from here all the way to the north side of the Black Sea and westwards too to Italy this sprawling site doesn't originate in the archaic or classical eras of Greek history of Athens and Sparta and Alexander the Great nioria dates to a time before to the first [Music] Greece [Music] for here are to be found a number of thos tombs relics from the Meenan age of Homer's Odyssey and Jason's monster ridden search for the Golden Fleece a forlorn colossal
citadels of the prehistoric world cyclopian masonry and heavily armored Chariot riding Warrior Lords of elaborate palaces and intricately crafted technology swords feasting and wine though little remains now above ground from that ancient time to walk in the once Mighty Citadel here at Nicor today is to gain a fleeting window into the heroic past as always I'm your host Pete Kelly and I bid you welcome to history time soon we'll embark on our journey across continents and distant oceans some 3,00 , 300 years into the past but first a quick word from the sponsor of this
video who made this ridiculously timec consuming project possible back in the Glory Days of minini had the great Lords of the argolid simply sorted out their Internet Security they may never have needed to go to war at Troy if Agamemnon and menaus had only used surf shark VPN they would have been able to Simply change their virtual location to the troad meaning they could access all the great TV shows streaming from Troy as well as having their IP address there too to reduce the risk of being censored and hacked keeping their data SA safe from
online Pirates and sea peoples brigands who could potentially access their data when stopping off and using Wi-Fi at an oracle or a temple while surf shark VPN would keep the movements of the aans secret by not monitoring tracking or storing the high King's activities it even also has a clean web feature which blocks ads trackers malware and fishing attempts don't be like adius getting lost for 10 years after the Trojan War secure your online data today by signing up for an account with surf shark VPN now I've teamed up with surf shark to offer you
up to 6 months for free by using my code in the description below they even offer a 30-day money back guarantee thanks again to Surf shark VPN now back to the ancient world when archaeologist Carl Blan set about digging up the ancient ruins of pilos in 1939 the world watched on in awe within weeks astounding discoveries were made [Music] in the midst of an immensely impressive palatial complex dating to the second millennium BC an entire Archive of Records Was Unearthed written in a mysterious text known as Linear B by far the largest collection on the
Greek [Music] mainland It could only have been the long lost library of an ancient European kingdom known previously only in Epic storytelling tradition and myth soon enough the place was named for the wise King said to have ruled in these parts in the days of the Trojan War the long dist disappeared World Of The Iliad and the Odyssey seeming to come back to life today whether strictly historical or not it still proudly bears that name the Palace of [Music] Nestor though a golden age for archaeological research the late 1930s was of course a time of
immense societal turbulence and cataclysmic change too within a matter of months of the first Digs at BOS the Axis powers moved their plans to [Music] fruition Greece falling within the orbit of fascist Italy would would doggedly fight for its independence for years to come when Blan was finally able to return to pilos to regroup with his Greek colleagues like the aftermath of all wars everything had changed for one thing radiocarbon dating a byproduct of the ridiculously high budgets pumped into the war effort was bringing archaeology in line with modern science for the first time providing
exact dates within around 50 years or so where rough estimates had sufficed [Music] before when it came to the very late prehistoric iic period the Heyday of Myan Greece and the previously only Mythic Trojan War the new dates were often shockingly accurate to the estimations of classical Scholars unknown to Blan on the other side of the Atlantic a New York scholar had been tirelessly working for decades on the linear B tablets found on cre as far back as the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Evans though Alice Cobra died before the work could fully be brought
to fruition her efforts and those of countless others would culminate in 1952 when Linear B was finally successfully translated as it so often does the Breakthrough came from an outsider Michael Ventress an amateur codebreaker had long had a hunch that line be was in fact Greek in its very earliest archaic form and that hunch turned out to be correct finally by the mid 1950s for the first time in over 3,000 years the words of that ancient land could be [Music] read the stories they told though usually consisting of minimal records rather than epic sagas have
nevertheless added near unfathomable amounts to our understanding of bronze age Greece specifically revealing unique insights into the inner workings of one of its foremost kingdoms sprawling across the far Southwestern province of [Music] messenia in homeric Tradition said to be the kingdom of pilos ruled over by Wise Old Nestor second only to Agamemnon of minini in importance amidst the hundreds of tablets in the so-called archives complex at the palace of Nestor were found a number now known as the Coast Guard tablets a unique list of the defenses and settlements in the Kingdom for administrative purposes described
as divided into two provinces roughly translating as the hither or closer and the far lands usually assumed to be oriented from pilos perhaps as well as the recently discovered secondary Capital Center at ien not far away the list begins at the northern portion of the hither or near Province running down and along the coast of the peninsula ending with just one town in the far Province it is possible that the only settlements listed are those on the Coast or near enough to the coast to act as part of a Seaborn defense system perhaps explaining why
most of the settlements in pilos unlike the argolid and elsewhere did not need fortification walls their Mastery over the coast being their defense though no consensus exists today given the fragmentary nature of the sources and the sheer Antiquity of their age the hither or near province has nonetheless been widely hypothesized to lie west of the aelon and Scara mountains with the far Province and its shorter Coastline situated within the Hinterlands of the Meenan [Music] Valley just one town of the far province is named in the Coast Guard tablets not surprising ly ever since their translation
Scholars have hypothesized where that town could be translated as the rather indecipherable name Timo aii it was not the capital but one of seven principal towns usually assumed to be a coastal site or near to the ancient Coastline at least as well as being close to the provin IAL border with hopes of finding another archive like that at pilos the search was [Music] on of the nearly 200 sites surveyed over the ensuing decades just a handful of particularly large can candidates were pinpointed as potential locations for Myan towns or cities one of those sites among
the 10 largest in the whole of Mia and a place already highlighted by ventures's colleague and Myan expert John shadwick is [Music] nioria aside from the table OSS mountains rising in the haze to the east the summit of nioria provides excellent visibility in all directions a natural Crossroads well placed for communication as well as defense only 2 kilm to the South is the Meenan Gulf just about visible today in a narrow Coastal strip past a hilly expanse of Olive [Music] Groves it is important to remember that shorelines shift and change over thousands of years here
in ancient days the waves would have lapped much closer than they do today in the posos tablets Tima Kei is said to have acted as a lookout station one node in a vast Coastal Network we can imagine Runners heading off beacons being lit to send messages to the Palace as soon as unwanted visitors were seen be they trade ships to be taxed or plundered attack from other Meenan Palace Lords or Pirates a little further north on the adjacent Hill prehistoric remains have been found too tentatively identified as a lookout post for the city perhaps to
protect the exposed posterior side from Surprise visits with hopes of archives and immense discoveries the archaeologists soon moved in [Music] the team knew it was special as soon as they saw it poking out of the ground deep Hollow eyes staring back at them from the suered earth not much wider than pin Pricks when compared with some of the more famous finds of its kind like the lady of fapi and the multitudes of Idols found at minini and yet crude as it is somehow Primal fearsome even the soall Dame of nioria does seem to reside within
that well-known category of Myan sculpture most famously seen with the so-called Idols of my itself at just 0.67 m High it is a small piece the lower part of the face unfortunately having been chipped away at some point in the past leaving behind the mystery of what this part of the face originally looked like whether it had been round or long and pointed like the so-called Lord of aini from the poos headdress the Dame wears it has been concluded to be female perhaps like hypothesized examples from Manan cre representing a cultic priestess when the piece
was first sculpted it may well have stood up to an impressive third of a Meer in height though no evidence of paint has so far been found its gritty and coarse surface May simply have worn away over the [Music] Millennia today the Dame of nioria remains one of the most interesting pieces found at the site speaking of a very real apery of mean occupation that took place here in the late helic 3 3B period the 13th century BC the supposed age of the Trojan War by the time the intense 5-year program of large scale digging
undertaken by the University of Minnesota under the direction of Professor William a McDonald was completed in 197 4 a number of fascinating breakthroughs had been made thankfully for the archaeologists involved nioria had indeed been a place of great significance though given the complicated layers of habitation and significant levels of erosion and damage over the Millennia the place remained frustratingly difficult to comprehend from their first arrival in 1969 to the last trenches of 1974 a total area of 50,000 square m would be dug six strenuous campaigns of trench digging meticulously covering an area of 5,000 square
m and yet though this may sound like a lot it represented just 10% of the areas showing evidence of human habitation as with all digs priorities had to be made choices taken in addition to the various pieces of nioria that were still privately owned and thus out of bounds for digging only some of the trenches made it down to undisturbed soil both due to time constraints and as a result of the decision to not destroy later buildings to get down to the ever mysterious Meenan [Music] levels gone were the days of the destructive methods of
Heinrich schleman destroying everything else in his attempt to find what he was looking for nevertheless even with these difficulties the Myan Pottery pieces alone at neoria numbered over 800 small finds in general more than [Music] 2,000 animal bones and sculpture fragments in particular giving significant insights into burial Customs diet architecture and even foreign contacts Above All Else seeking evidence of nooria's relationship with the rest of the pilos Kingdom one of the more significant finds was the evidence of Resident bronze Smiths like the Dame dated by Pottery fragments to the era of the Coast Guard tablets
in the 13th century BC [Music] by the 1970s though John shadwick had ultimately changed his mind on nioria surmising it not to be timit toi after all but potentially another town in the southwest quadrant of the near Province the importance of the place as a pyan town matching descriptions in the tablets could not be denied crucially all being described as having bronze Industries tied to the palace with contributions being passed back and forth the bronze working at nioria then provides a rare convergence of contemporary Myan records and archaeology back in 1969 it had all begun
when a test trench in the north and west of the site revealed Myan foundations and a great sigh of relief though like most areas of the site which continued to be intensively inhabited until well into the high Medieval era later ruins stood on top obscuring much of the most ancient levels in this case mysterious geometric structures from the end of the Dark Age following the Myan period And yet even so entire streets from that late Bronze Age city were ultimately uncovered especially on its southern side where curving Terrace walls gave tantalizing hints to the magesty
of the place in ancient days on that southern side running along and over the edge of the Hill another wall was found running from the Northeast to the west southwest quadrant which may also be of Myan date [Music] though this particularly intriguing section was unable to be excavated fully it has been hypothesized to house the deeply buried remnants of a grand gated [Music] entranceway perhaps not worlds away from the famous examples at minini and tyrn on the western side in a section known as area five a number of important finds were made in that part
of the Hill thought to have once formed a natural Gully or Hollow centuries of plowing and Vine farming had unfortunately caused severe destru rtion nevertheless a great deal of material was uncovered including Corner moles for creating intricate jewelry of interlocking ivy leaf bands and the Dame of [Music] nioria in addition to the bronz working area in unit three and four actual bronze Goods and other crafted items were found for example well over 200 spindle worlds were collected dating all the way from the middle helic to the so-called Dark Age following Myan times notably on a
rubbish dump one large figurine body dating to the early days of M Ian settlement was found the head unfortunately missing though animal figurines are fairly common at Myan sites generally assumed to be Idols perhaps representing deities larger ones are much more rarely found notably a sizable fragment of an animal figurine was found at nioria thought to be a pig originally standing at around 10 cm up to its neck larger when it had a head it's not the most impressive example ever found but it does put nioria within the mainstream of late Bronze Age Society at
the [Music] time not far away was also found a small horse's head not unlike those found at minini and published by Angela Tamaki and yet for those searching for the lost city of the archival records a single potard provided the most tantalizing evidence of [Music] all suggesting the existence of a literate Elite for it bore an inscription in Linear B but what of the layout of the settlement where did the people live and what can the archaeology tell us about their [Music] lives well unfortunately the area has suffered so much from erosion and looting over
the years that stratified information is patchy at best rather than a detailed plan we have an immensely complicated series of habitations obscuring Myan foundations and when those buildings can be seen they are a far cry from the glittering palacial centers at the heart of the pilos PO in comparison to the Palace of Nestor and the multi-storied complex at ikena they have been called crude and provincial the final reports from the Minnesota Expedition for example stated with certainty that no building prior to the Byzantine era had been roved with terracotta tiles a luxury style that elsewhere
had been seen as early as the third millennium BC at sites like Lerner in the more affluent argolid nioria did not seem to follow the conventions of the more distant capitals perhaps the elites here simply didn't need to invest their wealth in such flamboyant displays of power towering over the surrounding Hill and plains people outside their walls [Music] anyway but what of that Elite as usual for them we have some of the best evidence of all seen most obviously in the mighty dros and thos tombs that survive largely intact to the present one in particular
at nioria intricately built from Limestone likely used by the ruling Dynasty ranks among the largest and most impressive in all the Myan [Music] world when cleared in 1971 and fully excavated down to its original base level in the next years as expected most of the tomb's contents were long gone various fragments of Ivory and bronze shards just giving hints of what had once been interred the one constant in archaeology often being near total disappearance to [Music] Oblivion far from a modern occurrence the initial opening and looting of the tombs took place as early as the
end of the Myan [Music] era by the 4th Century BC they had become places of veneration once more just as they likely were at the time of their construction places to visit the venerated ancestors real or [Music] imagined clearly still prominent structures like many other thos and chambered tombs in Mia becoming cultic centers harking back to an age of Heroes of long [Music] ago else wear on the site a great deal of so-called Dark Age evidence dated tentatively to around 1050 to 975 BC is regularly found among the scree and the rubble including coiled bronze
Rings earrings and an elaborate pin a good deal more evidence than at many Myan sites suggesting some sort of continued habitation the possibility of a collapse here just like at the palacial centus has been suggested with evidence of possible burning though this is far from [Music] definitive what the evidence does definitively show is that after the so-called Dark Age came the geometric period an equally mysterious time before even archaic era Greece during that time a much reduced Iron Age Village would develop in the section of the site known as area 4 given the evidence from
the digs from the cemeteries the buildings and the material Goods there is no question of the ReUse of the Acropolis in the era after the Myan apery after about the 11th century BC often in a much reduced State perhaps after an intermission of a 100 years though we can't say for sure but what of the beginning of nioria how did it develop and how did it become part of the kingdom of [Music] pilos when people first came to nioria long before the fences and the cultivated Olive Groves it looked looked very different to today when
those early farmer ancestors of the late Stone Age arrived the place was still a prominent feature of course though not yet shaped by the hands of humanity portions of the Cliff's Edge and Hillside ultimately having been cut down and molded over the ages forests coated the land in those days of nald Oak pistachio and others and though largely invisible now from an archaeological perspective high places provided good Vantage points for settlements but most alien of all visible in geological iCal features indicative of coastal erosion on the base of the cliffs the sea likely lapped at
the Hill's Edge only in relatively recent centuries would the Sandy Coastal plane we see today begin to form so when the Revolutionary concept of metal working first first appeared in Greece at the beginning of the third millennium BC seeming to go hand inand with Elites since the very beginning Coastal trading routes became integral to the power of rulers in the increasingly socially stratified Society of the Bronze Age nioria with its readymade defenses and adjacency to the Sea roads must have seemed a perfect location and unsurprisingly a small autonomous Community began to coales archaeologist Philip rap
goes so far as to suggest an archaic Lagoon once extended well into the valley mouth of the Caris River providing not just shelter from storms but good Landing sites for small prehistoric vessels until it dried up in the Roman era the precise location of The Harbor at nioria however remains a mystery no digs as of yet having confirmed a location in the Ever Changing [Music] landscape given the apparent Coastal nature of the the site it comes as little surprise then that some of the most impressive remains from the early layers seem to have originated at
least in influence from Elsewhere for in the later part of the middle helic phase in terms of pottery Styles there is a great deal of similarity with minow and creit [Music] that famed island of Palace Builders and seafarers spoken of by the classical historian thiddies as the first great sea power or phalos cracy of the [Music] aan not far to the south in myth ru R over by King Minos the builder of the labyrinth archology too suggests a very real flourishing in the middle Bronze Age likely influenced a great deal by the power of ancient
Egypt they in turn likely had a marked effect on the people to their north and west along shorelines as far north as [Music] Troy in those days the archaeology at nioria suggests a modest scattering of families spread widely over the ridge a largely self-contained Community with evidence of Metallurgy and though cultural influence from CRE can be seen no doubt trade links fostered with one or more of the palacial centers of the island no evidence of political or economic domination can be seen no burials are found either which matches with creit itself for that period Sky
burials or sea burials hypothesized as means of disposing of the Dead suggesting the culture of CIT may have been somewhat contagious with the exception of Maly nioria remains one of the only prehistoric settlements in the southwestern pelones to be investigated in [Music] depth these two local centers seeming to have played similar roles throughout the middle and late helic periods ultimately sharing the same fate of The Wider political events of the aan for by the 16th century BCE major change was on the [Music] way in the 16th century BC the island of Santorini exploded obliterating habitation
on the island and launching tidal waves and dust clouds across the sea such was the power of the destruction and resulting tidal waves the pmus from the eruption can actually be seen at nioria much closer to the eruption Zone however was CIT A Century of chaos ensued and the forging of an entirely new system to the north meanwhile in the argolid of Mainland Greece and neighboring ateka and boia in bays and inlets sheltered from the shock wave from Thea the various ious ships and War vessels of the Mainland previously a rather provincial culture would move
out and Forge the world a new soon enough creit and the rest of the aan would be Myan nioria was no exception like a history of The mean world in miniature a gradual shift being visible in the archaeology as well as significant population growth the place seeming to be the center of an emerging political and social unit of considerable complexity in the late helic 1 and 2 eras very much in the mainstream of The mean world one of the main pieces of evidence for this is from the [Music] cemeteries dating to the very earliest days
of the late alic continuing throughout the Myan [Music] age for unlike the previous eras the great Lords and Ladies of nioria were now laid to rest in Mighty tombs that are still visible today throughout the last 200 years of scholarship on The mean world ever since the halian days of schleman and sunas a great deal of emphasis has been placed on thos and dros tombs as concrete evidence of so-called Royal dynasties after all those early researchers reasoned who else but kings and queens could afford such edifices and yet in reality besides the immensely wealthy grave
Goods compared to other Graves of the time outside of Homer's catalog of ships which talks at length of petty kingdoms though actually written down hundreds of years years later very little corroborating evidence exists the massive tomb of Angelica on mikinos for example now languishing as a rubbish dump for a mostly oblivious Hotel though once the greatest in all the cides does not seem to correspond with a nearby City or Center of any known Kingdom likewise we do not in actuality know whether the early so-called kings and queens of nioria actually controlled the surrounding territories or
even Villages lying much beyond the orbit of the settlement it begs the question whether these were actually Royal dynasties at all or if a multitude of ways of governing could have been in use like protop policies of the later classical age [Music] though it seems likely that exploitation of land resources in the immediate areas would have been intensive along with considerable trade coming and going by land and sea without written records it remains difficult to know whether a poity existed solely on the Acropolis itself or extending outwards to the surrounding area though Clues can be
gained from neighboring [Music] sites just 2 and a half kilom away at the Village of Daphne another thos tomb is to be found along with possible indications of an adjacent mean settlement should we be imagining a fully autonomous neighboring Dynasty within 3 kilm of nioria or should alternate hypotheses be sought for thos tombs a Cadet Branch perhaps like those that have been suggested for tyrin media and meini itself or even a ruling family of favorite courtiers designated as Prince princes to supervise Villages and towns not quite fully independent politically but following the burial customs of
the capital as best they could and finally we have the question of just when how and even if nioria was subsumed into the larger pilos poly what we do know is that by the 14th century BCE the apery of the site was ushered in the quality and quantity of the finds from the thos tomb even with the place having been looted show Prosperity reaching a peak whether the rulers interred there were put in place by posos or not lasting into the 13th century BCE apparently without a break we can't say as for the palace hoped
for by archaeologists though nothing concrete has been found thus far during the late helic 3A period there are indications that something akin to one may have once existed in the central saddle of the Southeastern side of the ridge in the location known as area 4 a heavily eroded late helic 3 complex has been suggested as the administrative center of the site perhaps once independent later ruled over by a provincial Governor reporting back to pilos just like Homer says in The Iliad then the possibility exists of a dynasty of vassel Kings ruled over by an over
King themselves in turn ruling over even smaller units though whether this distinction was one that even mattered to most inhabitants we can't say life possibly going on much as it had before and as for the governor of the city amazingly if the place was indeed Timo AI the Coast Guard tablets give us his [Music] name when I visited nioria in the late summer of 2022 a great deal had changed since the days of the Minnesota Expedition those excavators are knowingly having stood near the end of the so-called golden age of archaeology for want of funding
and inclination large scale excavations of sites like this one are rare now reinterpretation of existing information and small fail digs having become the norm for many reasons to visit today is to step back in time and though a few individuals did come through during our brief time on the ridge far from the usual hordes of tourists filling the major sites like minini and Athens we mostly had the place to ourselves there is no entrance fee no visitors center and no gift shop few fences to block off out of bounds areas and for precisely these reasons
visiting nioria was one of the most memorable experiences of the entire [Music] trip so it was then on a sleepy morning on the road from naphon to pilos we made our stop as far as I could tell some 50 years had passed since the place had been dug the still visible trenches and exposed foundations having become overgrown over the years dangerous even to unsuspecting passes by with few information boards and only scattered fragments to be found online sites like these demand an imagination besides the thos tombs there are few visible remnants but that's precisely why
I love the place for someone used to British Hill fors and Neolithic settlements imagination is often all we [Music] have cyclopian wall or Ridge line ancient Citadel or patch of Earth it isn't easy to tell but in order to do so thankfully we can turn to the records of the digs themselves and in the late 60s when the team from Minnesota began digging here almost immediately they found the place to have been a flourishing settlement though as we have already seen one of their great desires remained to find an archive of Linear B tablets like
those found at pilos dating to the late helic 3B period the late 13th century BC tablets that document an extensive and well organized bureaucratic system a snapshot of a kingdom stretching North to the Neda River and along the coast to camata indisputably administered from the palace at posos fired fused and saved from Oblivion entirely unintentionally when the place was destroyed by fire around 1200 BC unfortunately after some 40 weeks of systematic digging no archive was found nor even a conclusive palacial Center or administrative Hub a mere single pot Shard bearing a possible Mark of Linear
B being the only evidence that anyone at nioria had been literate at all nevertheless when utilizing the posos tablets alongside the archa ological data we can glean a great deal of information not only on how nioria functioned but how it was likely to have been governed too even if its identification as Timo a ke is [Music] incorrect for the tablets give the mayor of Timo aii at the time of the destruction of pilos a name an extremely rare figure coming alive from those ancient records his name was peros and even if nioria was a different
site surely it too had a peros of its own what happened to peros or whatever the mayor of n Toria had been called at the time of the end of the Kingdom remains completely unknown as does the manner of its destruction and who precisely carried it out the violent upheavals at the end of the Bronze Age remaining one of the great mysteries in world history with outside Invasion and domestic Revolution being equally suggest rested it's even possible that our mayor was one of the leaders of the attack on nestor's Palace throwing off the shackles of
distant rule in a time of change for nioria May well have survived the end of the Bronze Age at least for a Time but what of peros before that fateful destruction and what can the tablets tell us of nioria at the very apery before the [Music] fall up until the cataclysmic change that brought the palacial centers of the aan to their knees by the 12th century BC the resource that kept the world moving was bronze in that time before currency as we would recognize it and when the vast majority of people had no access to
metal of any kind that alloy of tin and copper was utilized primarily to forge instruments of power weapons of war beautiful craft items and the gifts of Kings whilst copper was rare being found only in a handful of locations tin was virtually non-existent those who could gain access to the meager trickles coming in from what is now Afghanistan and perhaps a few other places could become extravagantly rich and though we don't know enough about Bronze Age trade to definitively talk of monopolies it does seem that in the aan the tin trade was linked above all
else with the central authorities of the palacial centers in msia in particular the posos tablets speak of bronze Imports being allocated to each town and Regional capital in melted down lump sums to then be reworked by the various Regional metal Smiths as they saw fit fascinatingly at nioria chemical analysis does indeed suggest most of the metal work to have originated from reworked bronze rather than Alloys of raw tin and copper chemical analysis also indicates the bronze to be extremely low in in tin perhaps the rarest and most sought after resource in the world at the
time and one clearly not given up lightly by the Kings at posos the bronze at nioria is so low in tin in fact that it almost can't be called tin [Music] bronze and of course in return for that that bronze that marked the elite at nioria as different such Regional towns no doubt provided a range of services for the palace Center at [Music] pilos in return for protection no doubt they paid their taxes and in a pre monetary system this came in the form of goods and when the need arose military service indeed the very
reason why the concept of literacy was forged in the first place was to record such transactions and tributes and Linear B is no exception the surviving tablets mostly recording economic information and within the posos tablets in particular we are told of the productivity of the various settlements of the Kingdom [Music] no doubt due to the capital brought in for their lucrative Woolen coats sheep were by far the most common animal recorded on the tablets other animals recorded are pigs and a few cows used primarily for their hides though in the archaeological record cattle are extremely
rare goats not mentioned in the tablets are the most common of all used primarily for their milk and meat as sustenance rather than for export to the Palace besides animal produce among the other Goods of the utmost importance to the Palace economy was flax nioria cited on one of the most heavily watered places in an exceptionally fertile province with no fewer than five major rivers and Broad coastal plains was perfect for the growing of this product today the region still produces half of the flax grown in Greece with a convenient land route also existing to
the pilos heartlands to the west where raw fla could be sent on to the Palace in return for his Aid in bringing tribute to his Overlord peros was likely a very rich man and if the thalos Tomb at nioria did indeed contain the remains of the leaders of the site the bones and skull fragments of between 10 and 17 individuals having been found in all peros may well have been laid to rest among them tiny fragments left behind by grave robbers giving hints of the bronze vessels seal stones and other riches deposited with them for
the next World artifacts that clearly Place nioria very much in the mainstream of Myan Society far from a Backwater as once assumed Pottery fragments too demonstrate a few imports from the Arid and even minini itself and in one particularly well preserved area the buildings line up neatly along the remains of a well-planned cobbled stone street so then though we may have discovered where parros's life came to an end and and there is of course no reason to assume that a palatial complex would even be recognizable here in the same way as they are at pilos
tyin minini or thieves one last question remains where did our governor reside in [Music] life at both edges of the ridge slightly raised up areas Acropolis within the Acropolis have long been hypothesized as potential locations for the administrative Heart of the City Homes of the rulers of nioria or even a lost [Music] Palace one of the sides though damaged extensively over the Millennia revealed r no evidence of Bronze Age habitation at all the Northwest Edge however though also having suffered extensive damage over the Millennia did reveal evidence of Myan buildings though only fragments having survived
if an administrative archive had ever existed here without clear evidence of a conflagration at the end of nooria's Bronze Age the sundried tablets would have simply been scattered and disintegrated back to the Earth paradoxically it is only destruction that saves such records from [Music] Oblivion [Music] today nioria lies dormant awaiting further techniques in the future to unlock the last of its Secrets thankfully it is safe for [Music] now thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video then hit that subscribe button for much more of the same and here's another video I made on a similarly
fascinating Bronze Age culture thanks again and I'll see you next [Music] time hello folks Pete Kelly here the guy behind the channel if you liked this video then why not check out my substack newsletter where I go on archaeological Adventures to the world's greatest historical sites all you need to do is put your email address in and I'll send you an update every few months or so cheers and I'll see you next time
