From 1250 BC, destructions at some major sites, like Pylos and Mycenae, heralded a period of intensified warfare and around 1200 BC most major centres were destroyed by fire. The cause is much disputed.
One group sometimes blamed were the Sea People, maritime raiders from the Aegean and surrounding areas who were active in the southern Mediterranean around 1200. It was perhaps they who sacked Pylos. Alternatively the destructions may have been the result of peasant uprisings or of the kind of interstate warfare familiar from later, Classical Greece.
Some scholars argue that land-borne outsiders were responsible, highly organized raiders who destroyed and plundered but rarely settled. Whatever the cause, Mycenaean society continued after the fall of the palaces but in a changed form. Gone was the palace system and all its trappings, such as written records. Regional styles of pottery now appeared, implying a diminution in Mycenaean cultural unity.
Nevertheless the Greek culture that emerged some centuries later was clearly derived from the cultural and religious traditions of the Mycenaeans, seen not least in the legends recorded in Homer's glorious verse.
