1、Chapter 1 Ancient Greece,Ancient Greek culture plays an essential role in the world culture. Ancient Greek culture has provided the creative energy and prototypes for later forms of Western society. Intellectual and cultural achievements, together with social and economic developments in ancient Gre
2、ece and its neighbouring areas, mark the real beginning of Western civilization.,Ancient Greece,I. Greek History II. Greek Environment III. Processing of Greek Civilization IV. Greek Culture1. Greek Mythology2. Greek Philosophy3. Literature4. History5. Art and Science,I. Greek history,Greece is a mu
3、ch harder place to live than Egypt, because the soil is not as good and there is not always enough water to grow plants for food. So people did not move there until a lot of centuries later. Our first evidence of real settlement in Greece comes from about 55,000 BC (57,000 years ago). Even then ther
4、e were not very many people until around 3000 BC. Greek history is usually divided into a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age. Sometimes people divide each of these periods into smaller periods as well.,I. Greek history,Stone age Greek History Bronze ageIron age,II. Greek Environment,Greece, un
5、like Egypt or Mesopotamia, is not a place that is easy to live in. 1. mountainous 2. coastline 3. unstable 4. trees,1. mountainous,The soil is not very good for growing things, there are a lot of mountains that make it hard to walk from one place to another, and there is never enough fresh water. Be
6、cause of this, people did not settle in Greece as early as they moved to Egypt and the Fertile Crescent,2. coastline,On the other hand, what Greece does have is a lot of coastline (beaches). No part of Greece is more than about forty miles from the sea: a couple of days walking. Plus there are a lot
7、 of small islands as well. So when people did come to live in Greece, they were sailors, and the Greeks have always spent a lot of time sailing on the ocean. The combination of good sailing and lousy farming tends to make Greeks try to get a living from the sea. This can take several forms. First, G
8、reeks fish a good deal. Second, they sail trade routes from one city to another, both Greek cities and elsewhere, all over the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and make a living buying and selling things. Third, Greeks hire themselves out as soldiers to fight for other people around the Mediterr
9、anean, especially in Western Asia and Egypt (where there is money to pay them). And, less attractively, Greeks also often turn to piracy or raiding to make a living, as in the Trojan War,3. unstable,Another important aspect of the Greek environment is that it is very unstable. Greece is smack-dab in
10、 the middle of a very active volcanic zone, where the Europe tectonic plate meets the Africa tectonic plate. There are several active volcanoes, and earthquakes are also very common. There is a nervous feeling that there could be a natural disaster at any time. This got the Greeks interested in a pa
11、rticular kind of religion which we call oracles. Oracles are the gods speaking to people, often in the form of minor earthquakes, and the gods tell the people what is going to happen in the future.,5. trees,One final observation: the Greek landscape does not look the same today as it did in the Bron
12、ze Age. There used to be quite a lot of trees on the hillsides of Greece, but people cut most of them down, and now the hills of Greece are mostly bare, or have little bushes on them. We are not quite sure when exactly the trees were cut down, but very likely it has to do with the beginning of using
13、 iron in Greece, around 800 BC. You have to heat iron very hot (1537 degrees Centigrade) in order to melt it, and that takes a lot of wood fires.,III. Processing of Greek Civilization,1. The early period of Greek civilizationa. Cretan civilizationb. The Mycenaean society and cultural achievements 2. The development and end of Greek civilizationa. The city-statesb. The reform and tyrant rulec. The culmination and decline of Greek civilization 3. The culmination and decline of Greek civilization,
