By 1600 BC the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece were emerging as a power. Gold was lavishly used by the elite; abundant weapons denote a warrior aristocracy.
By 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had gained control of Crete; they adopted the Minoans' efficient palace-based administrative system, using a variant of the Cretan script, Linear B, and eventually transferred elements of the system to their mainland home where palaces, some massively defended, began to appear in the 14th century.
Roads were built, for ease of military movement and to enable carts to bring in agricultural produce which was stored and processed in the palaces. These included wool to make textiles and olives to produce cooking oil and perfumed oils and unguents.
Frescoes on palace walls and Linear B archives give some indication of Mycenaean life at its peak. The palaces were the political, administrative and economic centres for communities that included many farmers and shepherds but also town-dwelling merchants, trading far afield, and craftsmen working in many materials, such as stone, pottery, ivory and metal.
Religion combined many Minoan features with rites and deities familiar to us from later Greece. The prosperity of Mycenaean palaces was declining by the mid 13th century BC.
