Ancient Greece

1. Ancient Greece Greece is important because its art, architecture, religion, and philosophy have heavily influenced the cultures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Greeks still influence our literature, government, and architecture today.

2. Greece 5 themes of Geography: Location/Region: Movement: Human-Environmental Interaction: Place: Physical-Mediterranean climate is hot and dry in the summer, mild and wet in the winter. Vegetation is mostly scrub brush and short grasses that grow well in dry summers. Greece consists of a peninsula and a chain of islands. People: • Made up of many Greek city-states that were ruled independently and often warred against each other. Now called Greeks, but then they identified themselves by the city they lived in or near-Spartans, Athenians, Thebeans, Macedonians, etc. • One of the ideas we get from Greeks is the idea of citizenship. But Greeks did not consider themselves Greek citizens. Land-owning men born in a city-state were citizens of that city-state and identified themselves with that city-state. • Speak Greek and use an alphabet-based written language. • Religion-polytheistic, believed their gods were human-like but powerful. Their gods and heroes often show up as allusions in modern literature. • Due to the 4 seas that Greeks had easy access to, many Greeks were fishermen and sailors. Although the soil in Greece is rocky and its climate dry, many men were subsistence farmers. Wheat, barley, olives, and grapes were their principle crops. What is subsistence farming? What kind of animals did they raise in this arid land? Since Greece was not great land for farming, it relied heavily on trade with other nations to provide it with food and other goods. How might Greece’s status as a trading nation affect its culture?

3. Important Ideas We Get from the Greeks: • Citizenship: the idea that people could be citizens of a country. • Democracy: In Athens, Greece, they formed a government in which citizens (free males over 20 born in Athens) could vote on every law and issue. This is called direct democracy. • They dropped white and black rocks in a jar to vote, and majority ruled. • Jury trial: the idea that people have the right to be tried by a jury when accused of a crime.