Greek civilization: an Overview

[mounkid]

When and where did the Greek civilization start?

It began in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, 5000 BC (about 7000 years ago), the first signs of advance agriculture appear on the island of Crete in Greece. This gives birth to the first civilization of Greece and the first civilization of Europe. By 3000 BC - 1170 BC they had reached their height. It started on the mainland of Greece by the Mycenaean’s; tribes migrated there after the Flood and were descendants of the Biblical Noah.

Greek Achievements:
Ancient Greeks made many influential contributions to western civilization such as in the areas of philosophy, art and architecture, and math and science.
The ancient Greeks have made many influential contributions to western civilization. These contributions, which are also the achievements of ancient Greece, include certain things in the areas of philosophy, art and architecture, and math and science. The ancient Greeks were a remarkable civilization in that they have made all these contributions and achievements while simultaneously fighting two wars, the Peloponnesian wars and the Persian wars. One inner-lying region of Greece, Sparta, and one adjacent region to Greece, Macedonia, were also of no help. Whether it be fighting for territory or threatening to Greece over these regions was nevertheless a problem. Luckily for western civilization, Greece persevered through these hardships and managed to achieve one thing after another, ultimately contributing a vast amount to western civilization.
In the area of philosophy, Greece had made many influential contributions to western civilization. Greek philosophers were great thinkers who were determined to seek truth to a certain subject or question no matter where it led them. Three famous philosophers includes Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato. Socrates, who lived from around 470 to 399 B.C. believed that life was not worth living unless it was examined and the truth about life was sought out. He also believed that there had to be certain standards for justice and punishment. In order to solve problems in life, Socrates invented a method for solving these problems called the Socratic Method. In the world today this method is commonly know as the Scientific method and is used widely in the area of science.
Pluto, a student of Socrates, believed that society is like one big family and that if one person in a society needed help in some sort of way, the whole society should be there to help. Pluto also had many democratic ideas which he expressed through the book, The Republic. Lastly, Aristotle, who lived in Greece from around 384 to 322 B.C., was a philosopher who believed strongly that human reason was very important. He says that a life guided by human reason is superior to any other and that someone's ability to reason distinguishes them from anyone else. Many other ideas came from philosophers and two of these includes the thought that divine power ruled the universe and that human desire is dangerous and should be controlled. These ideas along with the ideas of human reasoning, standards for justice, and a democracy are still used in western civilization, therefore showing Greece's influence and contribution.
Another area of Greek achievement is theater. Plays began to become important in ancient Greece and two types of plays which were written and performed were comedies and tragedies. A comedy in ancient Greece was usually a play that marked or made fun of a certain topic, person, or group of people. One famous comedy writer was Aristophanes. He wrote the plays The Birds and Lysistrata. An tragedy in ancient Greece usually dealt with a moral or social issue, human suffering, and almost always ended in disaster. Three famous Greek tragedy writers are Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. Aeschylus wrote the play The Oresteia, Euripides wrote the play Medea, and Sophocles wrote the plays Oedipus the King and Antigone. One of the most famous out of all of these plays was Antigone. It was written in about 441 B.C. and was about a girl named Antigone who defies the king's orders and buries her brother, who was killed while leading a rebellion. In this play, many Greek values were expressed which is also the purpose of most western civilization plays today (to express certain values). Also, the ideas of comedies and tragedies are used in western civilization except expanded and twisted around a little. A lot of famous play writers today are also inspired by the works of play writers from ancient Greece.
The most important areas of Greek achievement were math and science. They achieved all kinds of things in the areas of psychology, astronomy, geometry, biology, physics, and medicine. In astronomy they formulated the ideas that the sun was 300 times larger than the earth, the universe was composed of atoms, and they calculated the true size of the earth. Someone greatly involved in astronomy was Aristotle. In geometry, ancient Greeks found the value of pi, and a man named Euclid, who wrote the book Elements around 300 B.C., theorized that if two straight lines cut one another, the vertical, or opposite, angles shall be equal. In physics, the lever and pulley was invented along with a force pump which eventually evolved into a steam engine. Important people in this area were Archimedes and Pythagoras who were two of the many influential Greek citizens. Ancient Greece has definitely made many influential contributions to western civilization.

Greek civilization collapse:
The timing and interpretation of the end Mycenaean period poses an array of questions that have yet to be answered.
The end of LH III B1 was marked by some destruction, in particular at Mycenae. By LH III B2, an augmentation of the Mycenaean systems of defense can be seen, a sign of increasing insecurity. But this does not seem to have been a period of crisis, because these levels have yielded archaeological material that bespeaks a degree of wealth in no way inferior to that of previous periods. The end of this period is nevertheless marked by a number of destructions in the greater part of the Mycenaean sites on mainland Greece.
LH III C saw a decrease in the number of sites in Greece, which might have been considerable in certain regions (nine-tenths of the sites in Boeotia disappeared, and twot Mycenaean traits, such that LH III C is considered to be a level of Mycenaean civilization. However, a new type of ceramic appeared, called "barbarian" because it was formerly attributed to foreign invaders, and there was also a continuing increase in the practice of cremation.
Several explanations have been advanced for the causes of the decline of Mycenaean civilization in this period. Those concerning natural factors (climate change, earthquakes) are considered more controversial. The two most common theories are population movement and internal conflict. The first attributes the destruction of Mycenaean sites to invaders. Sometimes the Dorians are invoked, sometimes the Sea People.
The movements of people occurring from the Balkans to the Middle East at this period, mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions calling the invaders by the name of the "Sea People", are quite real. It is known that these people were responsible for numerous destructions in Anatolia and the Levant. Mention of a people called Eqwesh (which recalls the term Achaean) in an Egyptian text of the 12th century BC has caused specialists to suppose that the Mycenaeans had taken part in these invasions (this is not certain). There is little else to tell us what happened in the Greek world.
There is the second theory, which has the Mycenaean civilization falling in the course of internal societal conflicts brought on by a rejection of the palatial system by the most underprivileged strata of society, who were impoverished at the end of the Late Helladic. This hypothesis is sometimes joined with the preceding one, mingling social divisions with ethnic divisions.
In this context it has to be stressed, that the beginning Iron Age made large numbers of comparatively cheap weapons accessible. An economic factor, that is also seen as a root cause of the apparition of the "sea peoples" in Egypt and the destruction of Ugarit and the Hittite Empire.
Whatever were the causes, the Mycenaean civilization had definitely disappeared after LH III C, when the sites of Mycenae and Tirynth were again destroyed and lost their importance. This end, during the last years of the 12th century BC, occurs after a slow decline of the Mycenaean civilization, which lasted many years before dying out. The beginning of the 11th century BC opens a new context, that of the protogeometric, the beginning of the geometric period, the Greek Dark Ages of traditional historiography.

[وردة الجزائر كوثورة]

thank you so much

[شدى الياسمين]

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