Antiquity · Ancient Lerna
Lerna is abandoned
c. 1250 BC Proven
Lerna stayed inhabited into the Middle Bronze Age. In the Mycenaean period the hill was used mainly as a cemetery and lived on only now and then, and around 1250 BC it was abandoned for good.
Read the full story: The man who gave Lerna a face
- Threads
- Ancient Lerna
- Certainty
- Proven confirmed by primary sources
Sources
- J. L. Caskey, excavation reports on Lerna in Hesperia 23–29 (1954–1960)
- Ephorate of Antiquities of Argolida, Archaeological site of Lerna Open (opens in a new tab)
Also in this period
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6000 BC – 3200 BC
First farmers settle by the springs of Lerna
In the Neolithic, more than 6,000 years ago, farmers settled on a low rise beside the springs, just south of today's village. Each generation built on the ruins of the last, so the settlement mound of Lerna slowly grew.…
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2500 BC – 2200 BC
The House of the Tiles
At the centre of Early Bronze Age Lerna stood a large two-storey building roofed with baked clay tiles and stone slabs. Rows of seal impressions found inside show that goods were stored and checked here, so it probably…
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c. 700 BC
Hesiod tells of the Hydra of Lerna
Around 700 BC the poet Hesiod is the first to write about the Hydra, the many-headed water serpent of the marshes of Lerna, killed by Heracles. In the later version of the story two heads grew back for every one he…
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c. 67
Emperor Nero tries to find the bottom of the lake
Beside the springs lay the Alcyonian lake, said to have no bottom; through it, the Argives believed, Dionysus went down to the underworld to fetch his mother Semele. Pausanias tells that the emperor Nero had ropes many…