Ancient Greece Powerpoint

• Peloponnesian peninsula

• Greece Geography
• Mountains cover 3/4 of Greece(hard to move around by land)
• 1,400 islands in Aegean and Ionian Seas
• Location shaped its culture
• Very skilled soldiers
• Poor natural resources
• Hard to unite the Greeks because of the terrain( they developed small communities)
• 20% of Greece is fertile land for farming
• Greeks diet consists of grains, grapes, olives.
• Temps. range from 48 in winter to 80 in the summer

• Mycenaean
• Began around 2000 B.C
• Mycenae is located on a rocky ridge and protected by a 20 ft. thick wall
• Mycenaean kings dominated Greece from 1600-1200 B.C
• Controlled trade in the region
• 1400 B.C Mycenaean's invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture and language

• Culture in Decline
• 1200 B.C sea people invade Mycenaean and burnt palace after palace
• Dorian's moved into the war-torn region
• Far less advanced
• Economy collapsed
• Writing disappeared for 400 years
• Except they told stories to each other and that’s how the history was transmitted from each generation

• Homer and Myths
• Only stories kept and passed on by word of mouth
• Homer lives at the end of "Greek dark ages"
• Recorded stories of Trojan War, Iliad and the Odyssey
• Trojan war was one of the last conquests on the Mycenaean

• Greek Concepts
• Arête
• Virtue and excellence
• Epics
• Narrative poems celebrating heroic deeds
• Myths were created to explain creation
• Zeus: leader of the gods
• Hera: Zeus' wife
• Athena: goddess of wisdom