In Sophocles' Philoctetes, Odysseus speaks of "a stone land uninhabited in the middle of the water". But war and peace, trade and religion, science and superstition, coexisted in the Aegean archipelago. In their long history, the Aegean islands have been visited by many pilgrims, crusaders, scholars and other travelers, as recorded in numerous published descriptions. Lemnos was no exception, since it had welcomed numerous tribes since prehistoric times and had seen many conquerors succeed one another.

The ruins of the oldest settlement of hunters and fishermen in the Aegean Archipelago, dating back to the 12th millennium BC, have been discovered in archaeological excavations in Fisini, Lemnos. Also, excavations in the area of Esokastro have brought to light an inscribed stele from Kaminia and the settlement of Poliochni dating to the Bronze Age. Homer called Lemnos amichthaloessa (inaccessible, inhospitable) and anemoessa (wind facing), while he also referred to the main occupations of the locals: metallurgy, agriculture and viticulture. Lemnos was the island of Hephaestus, the god of fire. Heraclides of Pontus (387-312 BC) wrote that one of the most important socio-economic transformations in the history of mankind was due to the art of metallurgy, which arrived in Lemnos in 1500 BC from the Thracian tribe of the Sidonians.

The name Lemnos -which first appears in 1200 BC in texts from Pylos- is probably pre-Hellenistic and comes from the word λήιον, which means "cultivated land". The Lemnos historian Argyrios Moshidis (1907) states that the name is probably of Phoenician origin and means 'white'.

The tribe that inhabited Lemnos afterwards (1200 BC) was the Minyans, descendants of the Argonauts. This was a period of prosperity for the island, as can be seen in the coat of arms of Eunius, the Homeric king of Lemnos during the Trojan War; the coat of arms was a golden vine leaf, a symbol of the tribe's trading skills and the productive potential of the island. The Lemnians were wine lovers and believed that they were descendants of Dionysus. The most popular ceremonies in ancient Greece - usually held in spring and autumn, i.e. at sowing and harvesting - were strongly associated with the fertility of the land. The myth of the Lemnian Evils - interwoven with the myth of the Argonauts - as well as the Mysteries of Cabeiri are associated on a symbolic level with the rebirth of the life cycle of nature.

According to Herodotus (484-425 BC) and Thucydides (460-400 BC), the Minyas were expelled from the island by the Pelasgians (1000 BC), who had been driven out of Attica. Hermes - patron god of shepherds, trade and fertility - was particularly popular among them (Moschidis, 1907). The Pelasgians maintained close relations with the Phoenicians, whose influence in Lemnos was evident mainly in religion, the primary sector and trade.

In 511 BC Lemnos was conquered by the Persians, but the Athenians expelled them a year later. The Persians recaptured Lemnos between 493 and 479 BC, but then the island was divided into cleruchies for the Athenians.  Agriculture was important for the survival and development of the Aegean islands. In the 3rd and 4th centuries BC Lemnos was distinguished for the development of viticulture and grain production. At that time it was densely populated and full of villages and farmhouses, especially in the more fertile areas (i.e. the north-western part, where livestock farming was developed, and the eastern part, where agriculture was developed).