1. Land of Greece

Question 1

What are Greece’s two fundamental features?

Answer 1

Mountains and the Sea

Question 2

What rare substance is found on Greek Islands?

Answer 2

Obsidean

Question 3

Who were the best seafaring people of the ancient world?

Answer 3

The Greeks

Question 4

What affect did mountains have on Greek civilizations?

Answer 4

They caused a great deal of disunity.

Question 5

What is a polis?

Answer 5

The greek work for city-state

Question 6

Was there an ancient political “Greek” nation?

Answer 6

No, just disunified Greek poleis, numbering about 70 at first.

Question 7

How did the limits on farmland have a big consequences for Greek history?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Who went to war over farmland?

Answer 8

Chalcis vs. Eretria
Sparta vs. Messenia

Question 9

What were Greece’s farmland like?

Answer 9

Shitty.

Only about 20 percent of Greece’s landscape is prime farmland

another 10 percent being adequate hillside farmland.

Question 10

The prime patches of farmland are scattered throughout the mainland:

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What were the greek’s solutions to farm land shortages?

Answer 11

1. Fight someone else for it.
2. 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.
3. The Sea - a city’s young men would seek their livelihood by sea, not by farming

Question 12

What did Greece have or trade?

Answer 12

• Slaves
• Timber from the mountains
• Limestone & Marble

Question 13

What else did Greek farmers have to fight?

Answer 13

Greece’s dry climate.

Question 14

What affect did limestone in the ground have?

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Describe Greece’s Weather.

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

When is the barren season for Greece?

Answer 16

Summer - Their winters are fairly wet and some plants flourish, but summers are hot and dry.

Question 17

Describe how rain hits greece.

Answer 17

Comes in from the west and dumps out at the mountains, leaving not much for the east side.

Question 18

Why would greeks not want to live on the east side, and why would they anyways?

Answer 18

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

Question 19

What are the meditterranean Triad?

Answer 19

Grain, Olives, Grapes

Question 20

Why would greeks grow grain?

Answer 20

Grown to eat

Types:
- Wheat tastes better but is harder to grow
- Barley is easier to grow but not as good tasting

Question 21

What did the Greeks use oil for?

Answer 21

• 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.

Question 22

What foods did greeks grow outside of the Mediterranean Triad?

Answer 22

o Beans - Their diets were largely beans
o Certain other fruit trees: figs, pears, pomegranates

Question 23

How are farming and soldiers connected?

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

What was Athern’s major import?

Answer 24

Food! Grain, specifically.

Question 25

What is an export economy?

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

What was Greek pottery made of?

Answer 26

Local clay - their soil is famously red because it has such a high clay content.

Question 27

Why is ancient pottery important?

Answer 27

(i) an ancient-world technology,
(ii) an ancient Greek industry and export-item,
(iii) a medium for the art of painting

Question 28

How did the ancient greeks feel about slavery?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Where did the greeks get their slaves?

Answer 29

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

Question 30

What was the heartlad of greece?

Answer 30

Peloponnesus: the mainland’s southern peninsula

Question 31

What was the house of tiles?

Answer 31

• 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

Question 32

Who arrived to Greece?

Answer 32

The arrivers were a nomadic people who’s language was an older version of Greek