2/17/2014: Greece

The First European Civilization: The Greeks

"Within Classical Greek Civilization there appeared ideas, art forms, and types of government whose influence on Western Civilization has lasted down to the present day."

The European Barbarians:

• focused on farming and welfare.
• barbarian- a term used to describe a distinctive way of life based on farming, warfare, and tribal organization that became widespread in Europe beginning around 2500 B.C.
• megaliths- massive rough-cut stones used to construct monuments and tombs 
• tribe- a social and political unit consisting of a group of communities held together by common interests, traditions, and real mythical ties of kinship. 
• The Earliest Europeans
• By 4000 B.C. farming and village life had spread throughout the continent.
• They may have been the one of the first people to build a plow
• The Barbarian Way of Life
• "When a leading warrior died, his horses and chariot, his bronze (or later iron) swords and daggers, and his gold and silver drinking cups would all go to the grave with him presumably so that he could go on riding, fighting, and drinking as a comrade of the gods in the afterlife.

The Aegean Encounter:

The farming wealth of the Aegean region, like that of Palestine, came from a combination of grain fields, vine-yard, and olive groves that was common throughout the Mediterranean land.

Greeks:

• had a government
• democracy 
• Minoan Civilization 
• arose in the Aegean island of Crete
• they traded with many people around the Mediterranean
• The Arrival of the Greeks: Mycenaean Civilization:
• They combined everything about themselves to form a new ethnicity called the Greeks
• The "Dark Ages":
• colony- in ancient greece, a new city-state settled in an oversea territory by a group sponsored by a city-state located elsewhere 
• oracle- a priest or priestess who was believed to give answers that were inspired by a god or goddess to question from worshipers at a temple.
• "the minstrels' listeners absorbed the traditional values that the heroic songs celebrated- the values of a warrior aristocracy that was at home on both land and sea."