2/25/2014

• Greece
• geography
• mountainous (mountains cover 3/4 of Greece)
• a lot of islands
• location shaped culture
• skilled sailors
• poor natural resources
• difficult to unite because of because of terrain
• approximately 20% of land suitable for farming
• 1/4 of peninsula are fertile valleys
• grew grains, grapes, and olives
• lack of resources most likely led to Greek colonization
• temperature range from 48 degrees in the winter to 80 in the summer.
• Mycenaeans
•  began around 2000 BC
• Mycenae is located on a rocky ridge and protected by a 20 foot thick wall.
• Mycenaean kings dominated Greece from 1600 - 1200 BC
• controlled trade
• 1400BC Mycenaeans invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture and language.
• culture in decline
• known as the Dark Ages
• Around 1200 BC sea people began to invade Mycenae and burnt palace after palace.
• The Dorians moved into the war-torn region.
• far less advanced
• economy collapsed
• writing disappeared for 400 years
• Homer and Myths
• Stories were passed on by word of mouth.
• Homer lived at the end of the "Greek Dark Ages"
• stories of the Trojan war in the Iliad and the Odyssey (written 750-700 BC)
• Trojan war was probably one of the last conquests of the mycenaens.
• Odyssey was 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter.