Greek Notes

Why the Greeks rocked: 

New Ideas

Incredible art forms 

Democratic gov. w/ citizen participation 

Innovators in warfare

Lo1- The European Barbarians:

4000 B.C - farming and village life spreads from Sumerian and Egyptian lands across SW Asia and the European continent. 

3500 B.C - some are organized enough to construct megalith, massive rough-cut stones used to construct and tombs, such as Stonehenge (finished in England in 2000 B.C) consisting of 160 massive boulders weighing up to 5 tons (100,000 pounds) each, stacked and circled and aligned to the movements of sun and moon. 

From 2500 B.C - Indo Europeans nomads migrated from the steppes on Western Europe 

THEIR LIVES CENTERED AROUND STRENGTH AND COURAGE, COMRADESHIP AND LOYALTY, CONTESTS AND BATTLE 

Their language would evolve into Greek and Lain 

Thinner populations than Egypt or Mesopotamia - they formed tribes, social and political unit consisting of communities held together by common interests, traditions, and real or mythical ties of kinship 

Tribes were headed by powerful hereditary cheiftians, thought of as kings

This is how Europe came to be populated by speakers of Indo- European languages who were skilled in farming, metalworking, trade and warfare

No cities, no written records, no fixed structure of gov . 

They were barbarians - non Greek 

They adopted they way of life of those they encountered and as they traveled (from 2000 B.C to A.D 1000) this is how civilization eventually spread throughout Europe. 

The distinctive civilization the Greeks developed is the first that counts as definitely "Western"