 The decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B script , a writing system adapted for the use of the Greek language of the Late Bronze Age , demonstrated the continuity of Greek speech from the 2nd millennium BC into the 8th century BC when a new script emerged . Moreover , it revealed that the bearers of Mycenaean culture were ethnically connected with the populations that resided in the Greek peninsula after the end of this cultural period . Various collective terms for the inhabitants of Mycenaean Greece were used by Homer in his 8th century BC epic , the Iliad , in reference to the Trojan War . The latter was supposed to have happened in the late 13th – early 12th century BC , when a coalition of small Greek states under the king of Mycenae , besieged the walled city of Troy . Homer used the ethnonyms Achaeans , Danaans and Argives , to refer to the besiegers . These names appear to have passed down from the time they were in use to the time when Homer applied them as collective terms in his Iliad . There is an isolated reference to a @-@ ka @-@ wi @-@ ja @-@ de in the Linear B records in Knossos , Crete dated to c . 1400 BC , which most probably refers to a Mycenaean ( Achaean ) state on the Greek mainland . 
