Further into Ancient Greece

-Ancient Greece is surrounded by the Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic Sea

-Greece is a mountainous peninsula (covers 3/4 of Greece)

-1,400 islands in the seas

-This combination shaped Greece's culture

-They had many skilled sailors & shipbuilders

-They had poor/limited natural resources, so they needed to trade

-difficult to unite Greece

-Known for olives- used for olive oil, and soap- also known for wine

-arable- good farming land

-valleys cover one quarter of peninsula , 20% is suitable for farming

-diet consists of grains, grapes, and olives

-lack of resources led to Greek colonization

-temperatures usually ranged mid 40s in winter and low 80s in summer

Mycenaeans 

-their influence began around 2000BCE

-located on a rocky ridge and protected by a 20-foot wall

-kings dominated Greece from 1600-1200BCE (400 years), controlled trade in the region

-1400BCE- Mycenaeans invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture and language "sea people" & Dorians

-around 1200BCE sea people began to invade Mycenae, burnt palace after palace

-Dorians moved into this war-torn region

-Dorians were far less advanced

-the trade-based economy collapsed

-writing disappeared for 400 years

Homer the storyteller

Greek oral tradition-stories passed on by word of mouth

-Homer lived at end of "Greek Dark Ages"

-composed stories of Trojan War c.750-700BCE

The Iliad- probably one of the last conquests of the Myceneans (Trojan War)

-The Odyssey- Odysseus attempt to return home, being thwarted by the angry god of the sea, Poseidon

-12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter

Did Homer actually exist?

-the "Homeric question"- Homer may have been a mythical creation himself

-a blind wandering minstrel; a heroic figure

Iliad and Odyssey may be the culmination of many generations of storytelling