The Cradle of Western Civilization
The civilization of ancient Greece flowered more than 2500 years ago but it influences the way we live today. Greece is a peninsula in southeastern Europe. The people of the region attempted to explain the world through the laws of nature. They made important discoveries in science. They developed democracy, where people govern themselves rather than being ruled by a king. The Greeks also valued beauty and imagination. They wrote many stories and plays that continue to be performed today. The ancient Greeks developed a great deal of what we take for granted. This is why Greece is often known as the Cradle of Western Civilization.
The people of ancient Greece could not farm most of their mountainous, rocky land, so they became excellent sailors who traveled to distant lands. The Greeks learned the alphabet from the Phoenicians, a sea faring people from modern day Syria and Lebanon. The mountainous land also meant that it was difficult to invade Greek lands. The Balkan Mountains in the north and the Mediterranean Sea form barriers that made it difficult for outsider to attack.
Ancient Greece was not a unified nation, but a collection of poli. Poli is the plural of polis, a word often translated as city, but a polis is much more. When we think of a city, we generally think of a place. A Greek polis consisted of a small walled area that was generally no larger than a few city blocks, the farmland that surrounded it, and most importantly, the people who lived there. Today we think of the people who live in a place as citizens, but to the ancient Greeks the people were as much of the poli as the land or the buildings. The word politics is derived from the Greek polis.
The poli often developed alliances, called leagues, for protection against other cities and foreign invaders. The poli of ancient Greece were eventually conquered, but their advanced ideas eventually spread across Europe and have influenced the way we live today.
Each polis was a nation of its own, but the poli of ancient Greece had many things in common. The Greek poli developed independently of one another because they were isolated by rugged mountains or were located on small islands, but the poli spoke a common language. The poli were also small and often had to depend on one another to survive. Further, the poli met every year at a great athletic contest known as the Olympics. Poli that were at war would suspend hostilities until after the contests. There is a modern nation known as Greece, but the poli of ancient Greece extended east to land we today know as Turkey.