Mycenaean can potentially mean three different things; it is most commonly used to refer to a material culture widespread across Greece from c.1550-1050 BC; it is also used to mean things specifically pertaining to a state based around Mycenae in that era, a state supposed from the massive palace at Mycenae itself, some writings from the period, and the idea was first suggested by the text of the Iliad; less often it is used to refer to a particular variety of the Greek language evidenced from c.1550-1200 BC, Mycenaean Greek.

So, the Mycenaeans. We know for sure that Greek languages were spoken during this period, because a particular form of Greek is rendered with the Linear B script you may have heard of. This is the Mycenaean Greek I referred to above. It is not directly ancestral to any Greek language still spoken natively, nor to the languages most commonly learned by Classicists. The analogy here is that Dorian, Ionian, Aeolic, Pamphylian and Arcadiocypriot are all clearly Greek languages but have different features -innovations or indeed archaisms. The Mycenaean Greek Linear B represents seems to be similar- its innovations and archaic features are different to those of most of the other ancient Greek languages. It is believed that Mycenaean is a strong contributor to Arcadiocypriot Greek, and possibly Pamphylian Greek as well, but it is not a direct ancestor of the Ionian Greek dialects. Therefore it is not an ancestor to Attic, Koine, Byzantine or modern Greek.

However, our language map of the period is skewed. We only have whatever evidence the Linear B tablets provide, and the number of scribes using that script is incredibly small, and ONLY Mycenaean Greek is used bar any loanwords. It's believed that Mycenaean Greek is functioning here as a reasonably standardised administrative language. Accordingly, we have no idea about the spread, form, or status of other Greek languages during this period. And that means a fundamentally simple question cannot be answered- we cannot map what areas were predominantly Greek speaking, or what Greek language they spoke. Additionally, their focus on economic matters means they have almost no direct insights on culture of the time, any inferences are indirect.

Here is what we do know about relationship to Greece- the language of the Mycenaeans is related to later Greek languages but not ancestral to most (or possibly all) of them. The political organisation of Mycenaean era kingdoms was totally different to the later Greek poleis- they were large, bureaucratic states with a focus around a King. Chariots seem to have been very prominent in warfare at the time, so whilst infantry existed chariots seem to have attracted a lot of focus as actual weapons of war, not just status symbols. At least some later Greek gods were worshipped in this era, though what these deities meant to their worshippers and how they were worshipped is pretty opaque. Armour looked different, pottery looked different, iron was far less prominent, houses looked different, temples looked different, cities looked different. The Mycenaean world predominantly looked to Crete and to Anatolia for its cultural influences, with the Mycenaeans probably conquering Crete and having diplomatic relations with the Hittite Kingdom in Anatolia (including at least some armed conflict). We do not know exactly what areas Greek speakers lived in during the Mycenaean era, but it is a safe bet the area is nowhere near as extensive as that of the Archaic era or later. Whilst the Mycenaeans traded nearly as widely as the later Greeks, they don't seem to have settled almost anywhere (though there are some sites in I believe Italy and Cyprus that have been argued as trading posts). The world around the Mycenaeans would also have been very different- no Persian Empire in the east, or any single unified Empire for that matter, the Near East/Eastern Mediterranean was a very multipolar world. Many mythological elements of the later Greek world are not yet visible, and there are many later Greek ideas whose origin point we do not know- for example, the heroes, many of the mythical beasts, the accounts of the birth of the gods. So those are all, potentially, not related to what the Mycenaeans told as their stories.

The most likely reason why the Mycenaean Greek culture has been lightly reviewed in your history class is because it is subject of ancient Greek history that is hard to describe. First, Greek Mycenaean history only has two writing systems that predate all Archaic Greek dialects (Aeolian, Attic, Dorian, etc.) and one of them (Linear A) is not been deciphered yet. Linear A and B where the languages of the Minoan and Mycenaean Greeks that lived on the Greek mainland and the Aegean islands, including Crete and Cyprus, roughly between the years of 2400-1200 B.C. This leaves Mycenaean Greek historians to use archaeology as a historical source, a difficult practice within itself that doesn’t give too many straight forward answers. These problems are probably why Mycenaean Greece is not talked about as much because it takes lots of specialized knowledge to talk about the events of the Mycenaean Period in ancient Greece.

But even after the difficulty of plotting the Mycenaean Period’s events and culture, there have been similarities found that are related to “Dark Age”, Archaic, and Classical Greece. While these similar systems and processes existed within Greek Mycenaean culture, I should say that their political and economic systems were different during the Mycenaean Period. There were various kingdoms around Greece in Boeotia, Pylos, Mycenae, Sparta, Euboea, etc. that ran on a distributive economy led by the direction of the kings of each respective kingdom. So besides being the culture that existed before Archaic and Classical Greeks, the Mycenaean culture had three similarities. They had a similar city structure, a constant economic dependence on their land, and possessed the same trade relationships as their Greek descendants.

While “Dark Age” and Archaic Greece were made up of polis systems, the village and city locations of the Mycenaean period did not change. Even after the migration due to either the great drought, earthquake, or invasion around 1200 B.C. and when people decided to resettle Greece a little around 900 B.C, they lived in the same cities for a few reasons. They were great geographical locations for natural resources, there were certain helped infrastructures there, and there were villages from the “Dark Age” that existed in close proximity. Given these conditions, there were eventually more poleis in the Archaic Period but they still depended on the same land as their Greek ancestors did to produce the large increase of Archaic Greek poleis.

The Archaic Greeks were people that produced and collected their own commodities, most of them being foodstuffs, for themselves and close neighbors. This common Greek exchange of resources is described best by Hesiod in his Works and Days epic poem when Hesiod talks about his neighbor asking him for winter reserves from his shed. The Dark Age and Archaic Greeks kept any resources they felt would be handily and needed to sustain their lives and rarely traded commodities like barley, wheat, olives, and wine. These are things the Archaic Greeks never traded unless they had extras of these commodities and did not have room to store them (something that Hesiod also speaks about). For the Greeks believed in the shortage and the extreme value of all commodities they produced, much like Hesiod did in his Works and Days poem when he talks about filling his barn with his produced foodstuffs. This is likely what happened in the Mycenaean Period but all of the villages extra resources would go the palace, if not more at the king’s request. They were also similar because both cultures traded with the ancient near east through Euboea, Athens, and other cities on the east side of Greece.

The Archaic Greeks adopted the trade systems, routes, and trade relationships of the Mycenaean Greeks because ever since the Minoans existed, trade was active in the Mediterranean Sea between Greeks and the people of the Levant. The Minoans were the ones that controlled trade in the ancient Mediterranean around 2000 B.C. on the high seas since they have the first thalassocracy of the Mediterranean with their fabled fleet belonging to King Minos. So it was very likely that the Archaic Greeks traded like their ancestors that traded with the great Near Eastern empires like Assyria, Egypt, and ancient Syria. This was how the ancient Greeks of the Mycenaean Period and beyond got near eastern artifacts and why there are so many clay tablet fragments and cuneiform documents dating back to the Mycenaean and Archaic Period. They are found mostly in Northern Greece as Boeotia and Euboea were the centers of ancient Near Eastern exchange in the Mycenaean Period.

So much like the post before me, I will say the Mycenaean period was a time of Bronze Age Greeks that had a much different political and economic system. And it is only after the fall of the Mycenaean civilization that Greeks become more aristocratic nature and made the polis the norm in Greece. This then allowed them to become a more vibrant culture both socially and economically with the rest of the world than they previously were. In sum, the Mycenaean Greeks relate to their Greek descendants because they used similar city infrastructures, city locations, and fostered a similar local economic system. However, when Greece was recolonized, the Archaic Greeks decided to make a more independent political system. A change that allowed for aristocrats to rule Greece, not kings of the past like the ancient Near East kingdoms still had. Once again, like the post above mine said, Mycenaean Greeks are very different in some distinct ways but there are some geographical, economic, and culture similarities. These above factors have highlighted the difficulty scholars had finding connections between Mycenaean and Archaic Greece and Greece’s progression through the “Dark Age”, problems that still occur to this day.

Sources

Hesiod, Works and Days

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

J.B. Salmon, Wealthy Corinth: A History of the City to 338 B.C.

Joe Buck, A History of Boeotia

Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300-362 BC

Thomas Kelly, A History of Argos to 500 B.C