Personal questions again!
My reasons for posting here are probably same as yours, genuine interest for history and genetics.
I serve multiple masters (my clients), considering my profession.
Coming back to Greece 1600 BC.
What happened on the Greek mainland shortly before 1600 BC has recently been summarized by Helène Whittaker: Toward the end of the Middle Helladic period we see a fundamental break with the values of Middle Helladic society. There is an opening up to influences from the wider world, and the presence of rich and exotic grave goods indicates that wealth and conspicuous consumption were starting to become important to the expression and reinforcement of social and political status. In particular, using material culture to advertise contacts with the Minoan elites became a new way for members of the emerging Mycenaean elites to show how rich and powerful they were. In the political sphere, we see the development of a powerful military culture that was expressed through the material elaboration of the lifestyle of the warrior.
Drews argue that this was indeed a fundamental break rather than a development: the military culture, that is, was the result not of a process but of an event, a sudden interruption of the longue durée on the Greek mainland around 1600 BC.
The most likely explanation for the sudden appearance of a ranked society and militarism is that shortly before 1600 BC there arrived in the harbors of the Greek mainland military forces and their leaders. The linguistic argument about wheeled vehicles identifies the language of the intruders as Indo-European.
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