Western History 25: Who were the Dorics?

The Doric Greeks originated in the mountains of Epirus and Macedonia in what is now known as Northern Greece. The expansion of the Dorians southwards from 1150 BC appears to have hastened the fall of the earlier Mycenean culture. However it was the Dorians that would eventually provide the basis for the a more coherent Greek civilization that would dominate the peninsular in the 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE.

Extremely adept colonists the Dorians would also set up settlements in Asia Minor (Modern Turkey) that would develop into the Ionian realm of Greek civilization This  expansion seems to have been motivated by plague and famine in the Greek heartland. The Dorians introduced several dialects to Greece that include Delphic, Locrian, Elean, Northwest Greek Koine and Epirotic.  However they did not have a written language and much of what we know about them comes from a legacy of storytellers that specialized in myths and fables - a tradition that would carry through into the collective literature of western civilization.

The fabulist Aesop lived around the period of Doric domination although it is commonly believed that his origin comes from Thrace (modern day European Turkey).