As we know script was only used during the Mycenaean civilisation for accountancy, and during the Dorian invasion there had not been any script at all. That is why all we know of these periods are from excavations, and from text that was written down in a later period. Homer, who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, is one of those persons who wrote about these periods in Greek history.

We do not know who Homer might have been, what his real name was, or which poems were written by him. However, we do know that the oldest book of Europe is written by him, the book which is read by mankind for more than 2600 years already: the Iliad and Odyssey. People have admired this book since it was written in the ninth or eight century BC, no other book can claim this. Other civilisations that had left behind a book have often increased the importance of their book by giving it a religious significance. Nobody ever read Homer because he feared a God, nobody ever abused a line from this book to judge another person, and still... people read Homer.

The stories which are written down by Homer, had already been told from father to son for generations so you can ask yourself how accurate they are. Homer was at the end of a long line of troubadours who probably already travelled through Hellas at the beginning of the Mycenaean civilisation. Many aspects have been probably twisted in some way, and many events which happened in different periods happen beside eachother in his stories. But we do not have much other choice than using his works, which have been written as literature instead of history, in the reconstruction of the Greek history. Generally seen the society which he describes in his epic is different from and the Mycenaean one, and the one during the eight century BC, so we could assume that he describes society during the 9th and 10th centuries.

The political situation.

Homer described a world which was ruled by the nobles, who seemed to be competing eachother all the time. Each noble, or basileus in Greek, was at the head of a house (oikos) which future was dependent on prestige, performance, wealth and the connection of the basileus. The basileus was on the other hand dependant on the prestige of his house. Inside the house the power of the basileus was unlimited. For the connections between the nobles a primes inter pares, or "first among equals", was assigned, but his position could be questioned at any moment and he had to prove himself all the time.