How Did Ancient Greece Start?

We all have to start somewhere and the Ancient Greeks didn't arrive in Greece ready to write world changing epic poems, philosophy, and tragedies. They wandered into the Aegean after splitting from other Indo-Europeans, settled, founded a civilization, saw it collapse, and started again. As you do. The story of how the Greeks became the Greeks is a complex and surprising story. Far beyond the spread of their culture and language under the Romans, the Greeks saw a massive rise, rapid decline, and steady rise that eventually led them to be a massive influential cultural force for human history. But how specifically did the Greeks become Greeks?