The name of Hydra is due to the abundant waters that gushed from the rich springs it had in ancient times. Historians refer to the island as Hydrea and inside the island traces of ancient settlements have been preserved, as evidenced by archaeological excavations at Episkopi.
According to the archaeological data (surface finds, fragments of vessels, remains of a settlement at the site of Episkopi, etc.), the settlement on the island goes back to the times long before the Homeric period, i.e. the Late Neolithic era (3000 – 2600 BC).
In the cave near Pevges, south of the settlement, traces from the Late Neolithic era have been found. Dryopes, Mycenaeans, Cares, Samians, Athenian refugees from the time of the Persian wars, settled and inhabited Hydra.
One of the points of the island that seems to have been inhabited in all eras was Episkopi, the main agricultural and livestock center of the island, as here there were rich sources of water.
During the Proto-Hellenic period, the settlement took place near the Zoodochos Pigi area of Zourva, Agios Nikolaos and Agios Georgios in Mpisti, Nisiza, Bali and the people with their ships traded obsidian.
Traces of habitation from the Geometric era exist in Vlychos, just as there are also traces from the Macedonian, Late Roman and Byzantine eras in various parts of the island.
Hydra does not seem to have managed in the centuries that followed to evolve into a socially and historically structured place. Around the 13th century BC, it becomes a place of settlement and residence of Druopian farmers, shepherds and fishermen, hardy people without any particular ambitions and quests beyond the narrow limits of their place, who previously lived in the mountainous areas of Parnassus and Oiti and fled to the island under the pressure of the Dorians.
Two centuries later, with the descent of the Dorians, the Dryopes disappear and every trace of life on the island is lost. Thus Hydra was for tens of years, a rough and almost deserted place, cut off from historical and cultural development.
During Early Antiquity its historical role still remains insignificant. It is most likely that it was under the jurisdiction of the then mighty Kingdom of Mycenae (Homer’s Iliad, v. 100 – 109).
Historians of antiquity such as Herodotus (III 19) 484 BC, the geographer Ptolemy (III 334) 100 BC, the traveler Pausanias (III 439) 170 BC and the lexicographers Stephen the Byzantine (6th century) bc), Hesychius of Alexandria (450 BC) and Dionysios of Alexandria (150 BC), rarely mention her name.
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