Such incapacity on the part of the designer would be hard to
explain, were he to be regarded as the direct heir of the
Mycenaean culture. But the sources of the Geometric style are
probably to be sought among other tribes than those which were
dominant in the days of Mycenae's splendor. Greek tradition tells
of a great movement of population, the so-called Dorian migration,
which took place some centuries before the beginning of recorded
history in Greece. If that invasion and conquest of Peloponnesus
by ruder tribes from the North be a fact, then the hypothesis is a
plausible one which would connect the gradual disappearance of
Mycenaean art with that great change. Geometric art, according to
this theory, would have originated with the tribes which now came
to the fore.
Besides the Geometric pottery and its offshoots, several other
local varieties were produced in Greece in the eighth and seventh
centuries. These are sometimes grouped together under the name of
"orientalizing" styles, because, in a greater or less degree, they
show in their ornamentation the influence of oriental models, of
which the pure Geometric style betrays no trace.
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