Introduction for Chapter 3

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The Development of Greek Society and Culture

ca. 3000–338 B.C.E.

Humans came into Greece over many thousands of years, in waves of migrants whose place of origin and cultural characteristics have been the source of much scholarly debate. The first to arrive were hunter-gatherers, but techniques of agriculture and animal domestication had spread into Greece from Turkey by about 6500 B.C.E., after which small farming communities worked much of the land. Early settlers to Greece brought skills in making bronze weapons and tools, which became more common around 3000 B.C.E.

Although geographic conditions made farming difficult and limited the growth of early kingdoms, the people of ancient Greece built on the traditions and ideas of earlier societies to develop a culture that fundamentally shaped the intellectual and cultural traditions of Western civilization. They were the first to explore many of the questions about the world around them and the place of humans in it that continue to concern thinkers today. Drawing on their day-to-day experiences as well as logic and empirical observation, they developed ways of understanding and explaining the world around them, which grew into modern philosophy and science. They also created new political forms and new types of literature and art.

The history of the Greeks is divided into three broad periods: the Helladic period, which covered the Bronze Age, roughly 3000 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E.; the Hellenic period, from the Bronze Age Collapse to the death in 323 B.C.E. of Alexander the Great, the ruler of Macedonia, which by that point had conquered Greece; and the Hellenistic period, stretching from Alexander’s death to the Roman conquest in 30 B.C.E. of the kingdom established in Egypt by Alexander’s successors. This chapter focuses on the Greeks in the Bronze (Helladic) Age and most of the Hellenic period, which is further divided into the Dark Age, the Archaic age, and the classical period. Alexander’s brief reign and the Hellenistic world are the subject of Chapter 4.

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image
Religious Life in Hellenic Greece This painted wooden slab from about 540 B.C.E., found in a cave near Corinth, shows adults and children about to sacrifice a sheep to the deities worshipped in this area. The participants are dressed in their finest clothes and crowned with garlands. Music adds to the festivities. Rituals such as this were a common part of religious life throughout Greece.
(National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece/De Agostini Picture Library/G. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)

CHAPTER PREVIEW

Greece in the Bronze Age

How did the geography of Greece shape its earliest kingdoms, and what factors contributed to the decline of those kingdoms?

The Development of the Polis in the Archaic Age

What was the role of the polis in Greek society?

War and Turmoil in the Classical Period

What were the major wars of the classical period, and how did they shape Greek history?

Classical Greek Life and Culture

What were the lasting cultural and intellectual achievements of the classical period?

Chronology

3000 B.C.E. Bronze tools and weapons become common in Greece
ca. 1900 B.C.E. Minoan culture begins to thrive on Crete
ca. 1650 B.C.E. Mycenaean culture develops in Greece
ca. 1300–1100 B.C.E. “Bronze Age Collapse”; migration, destruction
ca. 1100–800 B.C.E. Dark Age; population declines; trade decreases; writing disappears
ca. 800–500 B.C.E. Archaic age; rise of the polis; Greek colonization of the Mediterranean; Homer and Hesiod compose epics and poetry
ca. 750–500 B.C.E. Sparta expands and develops a military state
ca. 600–500 B.C.E. Political reforms in Archaic Athens
ca. 600–450 B.C.E. Pre-Socratics develop ideas about the nature of the universe
500–338 B.C.E. Classical period; development of drama, philosophy, and major building projects in Athens
499–479 B.C.E. Persian wars
431–404 B.C.E. Peloponnesian War
427–347 B.C.E. Life of Plato
384–322 B.C.E. Life of Aristotle
371–362 B.C.E. Thebes, with an alliance of city-states, rules Greece
338 B.C.E. Philip II of Macedonia gains control of Greece