Ancient Greek Culture Essay

Ancient Greek culture first emerged around 1600 B.C. in Mycenae. This developed a powerful military and participated in a wide trading network. Over the next thousand years, Greek society organized itself into city-states. The most famous ones were Athens and Sparta. They served as centers of political, religious, and cultural life.

Mycenae was the first Greek state and was part of a Mycenaean Greek civilization that increased between 1600 B.C. and 1100 B.C. The Mycenaean Greeks were part of the Indo-European family of peoples who spread into Europe and Asia. One of these groups entered Greece around 1900 B.C. and gradually gained control of the Greek mainland. The Mycenaean civilization was made of powerful monarchies. The monarchies in these

various centers of power probably formed a loose alliance of independent states.
After the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, Greece entered a difficult period in which the population declined and food production dropped. Historians call the period from approximately 1100 B.C. to 750 B.C. The Dark Age because few records of what happened exist. Not until 850 B.C. did the basis for a new Greece begin to form. During the Dark Age, many Greeks left the mainland and sailed across the Aegean Sea to various islands. Many went to the western shores of Asia Minor, a strip of territory that came to be called Ionian Greece.
Greece is located in the south Eastern Europe on the Balkan Peninsula.

The southernmost tip of Greece reaches into the Mediterranean Sea. Mountains cover nearly ¾’s of mainland Greece. It is surrounded by about 2,000 islands. Greece has a dry climate and poor soil farmers planted crops well suited for barley, wheat, olives, and grapes. The sea is especially powerful during the winter when the winds are high and the seas are rough. . Ancient Greece existed over 2000 years ago. It was made up of a collection of similar city-states such as Athens, Sparta, Olympia and Corinth. They each had their own laws and rulers. The city-state Polis became central to the development of classical civilization in Greece. By 750 B.C., the polis became the focus of Greek life. The polis was a town that served as the center of the polis where people could meet for political, social, and religious activities. The central meeting place in the polis was usually a hill. At the top of the hill was a fortified area called an Acropolis that served as both a fortress and religious center? Below the Acropolis was an open area that served both as a place where people could assemble and as a market. Cities varied greatly in size a population. Athens had a population of more than 300,000 by the fifth century B.C., but most cities were much smaller, consisting of only a few hundred to several thousand people. The polis was a community of people who shared a common identity and common goals. As a

community