ABSTRACT
Later research has shown that Schliemann was wrong in attributing the Mycenaean graves to Agamemnon and his family; nonetheless, they are eloquent testimony to the riches and power of the earliest mainland Greek civilization. We now explore the developments that led to Mycenae and its predecessors. This chapter covers an enormous area of the ancient world. It is concerned not only with the humble beginnings of the formation of states and complex societies in areas like Anatolia but also with the rapid growth of what we have called a nascent world system over the mainland of Southwest Asia and the entire eastern Mediterranean after about 2000 b.c. (Figure 19.1). (See Table 15.1.) The societies described in this chapter all played a part in a much larger development: the growth of a truly international economic system that extended from Spain in the west to the distant Indus Valley in the east and lasted in various forms into historical times.
