The Greek Civilization

Ancient Greek Civilization started around 1400BC and ended around 337BC with the rise of the Roman empire. The older name for the Greece was Yunan and its capital was Athens. The feature of Ancient Greece was Poleis, a city-state. It was the defining feature of the Greek political rule.

Before living in Poleis, during "Greek Dark Ages", people used to live scattered throughout Greece in small farming villages. When the population of these villages grew, a sense of an organization started to evolve. They built a marketplace and a community place which led to the formation of a government and some sort of constitution (a set of laws). These set of laws helped to establish cities (Poleis) where the citizens had the right to vote and choose their government and the government would collect taxes and raise an army. The modern democracy is said to be practiced in Greece at that time and the words like politics, democracy and citizen have the Greek origin. Zeus was the gods of god for Greek people and they also believed that each Poleis was protected by particular god or goddesses, to whom they show a great deal of respect. The population began to increase in the poleis which led to the huge emigration. People were (mostly men) migrating away from their home Poleis and conquering the nearby land for settlement or agriculture. Between 750 and 600 BC, there were small colonies of Greece in Asia minor, North Africa and coast around the Black Sea.

The origin of modern Olympic games is also linked with the Greece. The first Olympic game was held in 776 BC. According to one of the legends, the games were established by the Hercules who brought a sacred olive tree to Olympia while another claims this is the festival established by hero Poleis after defeating King Oenomaus. But whatever be the reason of origin of Olympics, this was the central aspect of the Greek civilization. During Olympics, each Poleis would send its best athlete to compete. They all meet in one place and play the games. This helped to increase the bonding between the Poleis and increase interactions.

The land of Greece was not suitable for cultivation. That's why they had to move outside of Greece in search of cultivable land and place to stay. People were more focus on cash crops, like olives for oil, grapes for wine, rather than grains. Grains were traded from the Middle East, Sicily mad North Africa. The livelihood of Greek people depended on daily sales or exchange of goods. Compared to other civilization this civilization was unusually market oriented. Most of the people were nomads who used to fish (near the Mediterranean Sea) and others make pots and utensils and others were traders.Traders, fishermen, and farmers brought their goods to the market and local trade off would occur.

Greek culture was very rich in diversity. The art of craft, sculptures, paintings, pottery was highly developed. These crafts were dominated by religion so we mostly see beautiful temples and sculptures related to gods and goddesses. We still find relics of temples such as Parthenon, goddess of wisdom, Erechtheum, Apollo, Zeus and many more. The thought of Socrates, Pluto and Aristotle were prevalent. Homer, poet, wrote Iliad and The Odyssey which had a great influence on western culture. Mathematicians such as Pythagoras invented Pythagoras theorem. Socrates introduced the western system of logic and philosophy through his book "Socratic Method". He accepted his death, by hemlock poisoning, than to surrender his thoughts. Plato wrote a book called Republic which became one of the great political and ethical guidelines for political science. Aristotle was more or less a scientist. He also rejected the theory, Theory of Forms, presented by Plato, who was his mentor. He classified the area of human knowledge into different categories such as Mathematics, Biology, Physics, and ethics. He was the teacher of Alexander The Great.

Greek civilization laid the foundation for our modern society.