1. Land of Greece Flashcards
What are Greece’s two fundamental features?
Mountains and the Sea
What rare substance is found on Greek Islands?
Obsidean
Who were the best seafaring people of the ancient world?
The Greeks
What affect did mountains have on Greek civilizations?
They caused a great deal of disunity.
What is a polis?
The greek work for city-state
Was there an ancient political “Greek” nation?
No, just disunified Greek poleis, numbering about 70 at first.
How did the limits on farmland have a big consequences for Greek history?
o Food anxiety was a constant.
o So was anxiety over water supply.
o Neighbouring city-states might often (not always) be permanent rivals or enemies of each other, in competition for resources.
Who went to war over farmland?
Chalcis vs. Eretria
Sparta vs. Messenia
What were Greece’s farmland like?
Shitty.
Only about 20 percent of Greece’s landscape is prime farmland
another 10 percent being adequate hillside farmland.
The prime patches of farmland are scattered throughout the mainland:
the Plain of Messenia (the most fertile in Greece), in the southwest Peloponnese;
the Plain of Argos, in the eastern Peloponnese;
the Plain of Boeotia [“bee-O-sha”], in east-central Greece (major city: Thebes);
the Plain of Thessaly, in the northeast.
What were the greek’s solutions to farm land shortages?
- Fight someone else for it.
- Population Control - Starting in the 700s B.C., city states would send out shiploads of young peasant men to find new farmland in distant regions overseas: in south Italy, Sicily, North Africa, etc.
- The Sea - a city’s young men would seek their livelihood by sea, not by farming
What did Greece have or trade?
- Slaves
- Timber from the mountains
- Limestone & Marble
What else did Greek farmers have to fight?
Greece’s dry climate.
What affect did limestone in the ground have?
Limestone can also be washed away in the ground by ground water which leads to caves - This has resulted in Greece having a lot of caves, which have played a major part in Greek religions and mythologies
Limestone Leading to Water Loss - Another natural effect of ground-limestone is the loss of surface-water (such as rain or springtime runoff, etc.), vertically, down into the ground.
Describe Greece’s Weather.
Greece has a rainy season from October to April, but then the five warmer months are mostly rainless. Summer can be ferociously hot and dry.
In a Greek winter, the mountains receive snow but the valleys (and cities) receive rain.
When is the barren season for Greece?
Summer - Their winters are fairly wet and some plants flourish, but summers are hot and dry.
Describe how rain hits greece.
Comes in from the west and dumps out at the mountains, leaving not much for the east side.
Why would greeks not want to live on the east side, and why would they anyways?
It’s very dry because the rain hits the mountains and stops.
However, most of the population lived in the east because they had better harbours, which was a desirable place to live
What are the meditterranean Triad?
Grain, Olives, Grapes
Why would greeks grow grain?
Grown to eat
Types:
- Wheat tastes better but is harder to grow
- Barley is easier to grow but not as good tasting
What did the Greeks use oil for?
- cooking oil
- a food dressing
- a kind of “soap” for water-less bathing. The oil would be poured over a person’s skin and then be scraped off.
- a personal adornment or honorific.
What foods did greeks grow outside of the Mediterranean Triad?
o Beans - Their diets were largely beans
o Certain other fruit trees: figs, pears, pomegranates
How are farming and soldiers connected?
Soldiers did not want to be away from their farms during May-June because most of them were farmers.
Sparta is the exception, as they had fulltime soldiers and their slaves worked their farms.
What was Athern’s major import?
Food! Grain, specifically.
What is an export economy?
o The $-value of exports exceeds that of imports.
o You’re selling more then you are buying on the international market
Athens was an export economy by the 500s B.C.E.
What was Greek pottery made of?
Local clay - their soil is famously red because it has such a high clay content.
Why is ancient pottery important?
(i) an ancient-world technology,
(ii) an ancient Greek industry and export-item,
(iii) a medium for the art of painting
How did the ancient greeks feel about slavery?
It was assumed within the ancient world that slavery was a necessary part of life, same as they needed work animals
Cheep labour was necessary
Where did the greeks get their slaves?
main source of slaves in Ancient Greece was from wars (often competing city-states)
- A captured city would often find their men slaughtered and their women and children sold into slavery
Second source of slaves was overseas
- As Greeks travelled and explored if they came across a rich area they would come as tradesmen, but when they found a place that looked less organized or less protected they would plunder it and kidnap the women to sell into slavery
What was the heartlad of greece?
Peloponnesus: the mainland’s southern peninsula
What was the house of tiles?
- They think a prince or leader lived there and after their defeat his palace was burned down
- built circa 2200 B.C. by non-Greek aboriginal people
- destroyed circa 2100 B.C., presumably by the invading Greeks
Who arrived to Greece?
The arrivers were a nomadic people who’s language was an older version of Greek
