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 Greeks began as barbarian people.
• Barbarian means that they had a distinctive way of life, based on farming and warfare.
• Citadel and Shrine
• megalithic- massive rough cut stones used to construct monuments and tombs
• tribes- a social and political unit consisting of a group of communities held together by common interests, traditions, and real or mythical ties of kinship.
•  3500 BC megalithic structures constructed in Europe.
• 2500 BC Indo-European nomads from the steppes migrate into Europe; European barbarian way of life evolves
• 2200 BC Minoan Civilization takes root in Crete; Greeks arrive in southeastern Europe.
• 1600 BC Greek fortified settlements along the Aegean develop  Mycenaean civilization.
• 1400 BC Destruction of Minoan towns
• 1200 BC Mycenaean civilization falls, beginning of dark ages of Greek history
• 800 BC recovery  in the Aegean, Greek city-state forms
• 494-445 BC Persian Wars
• 460-430 BC Golden Age of Athens
• Stonehenge is the most famous of megalithic structures.
• the Greeks settled in the mainland Greece from about 2000 BC onward.
• the Greeks developed a distinctive civilization of their own, the first to emerge in Europe, and the first the counts as definitely "Western"