The first Greek colonization is effected by a population of émigrés from amid the displacements and reconstruction that occur in Greece proper from the middle of the eleventh century to end of the ninth century BCE (the Greek Dark Ages).

These movements result in the colonization of the Aegean islands, Cyprus, Crete and the western coast of Asia Minor and the founding of new cities. which afterwards become centers of the Greek civilization.

The colonization is effected in consecutive waves by tribal groupings known as the Aeolic, Ionian, Doric and Achaean (Arcadian) colonizations.

These movements differ from the Second Greek colonization in that they are more ad hoc affairs instead of the result of a planned process of colonization on the part of the mother city, and they are less well-documented historically, often with a mythologized or semi-legendary leader such as Hercules or Orestes being recorded as the leader of the colonists.