First Greek colonisation

The first Greek colonisation was effected by a population of émigrés from amidst the displacements and reconstruction that occurred in Greece proper from the middle of the 11th century to end of the 9th century B.C. (the Greek Dark Ages). These movements resulted in the colonisation of the Aegean islands, Cyprus, Crete and the western coast of Asia Minor and the founding of new cities which afterwards became centers of the Greek civilization. The colonisation was effected in consecutive waves by tribal groupings known as the Aeolic, Ionian, Doric and Achaean (Arcadian) colonisations. These movements differed from the Second Greek colonisation in that they were more ad hoc affairs instead of the result of a planned process of colonisation on the part of the mother city, and they are less well-documented historically, often with a mythologized or semi-legendary leader such as Hercules or Orestes being recorded as the leader of the colonists.

Within the span of the 13th century B.C.the Dorians, in all probability transplanted from the regions of Epirus and southern Macedonia, were moving farther south and exerting strong rule in the area of Central Greece with its centre of power in Doris. The Dorians who displaced the previous inhabitants of Southern Greece knew ironworking and there grew rapidly a great power in the hill country of Central Greece, out of which afterwards the Dorians which will have of necessity expanded southward into the regions which were inhabited in historical times by the Aetolians and the Locrians. In acquiring the region they displaced the previous inhabitants, the Dryopes, who fled to Euboea, to the islands of the Cyclades and to southern Argolis. In Euboea they set up a state, with its seat in Carystus while in southern Argolis they founded the cities of Hermione, Asine, Heiones and Mases. This movement of the Drupones was the first meaningful one in the region of Southern Greece in the shift from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

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