- 20% of land is suitable for farming
- Greek diet consisted of grains, grapes, and olives
- Good at making wine and traded this wine
- A lack of resources led to Greek colonization
- Temperatures ranged from mid 40's to 80's
Mycenaeans
influence began around 2000 BCE
protected themselves with a 20 ft thick wall
dominated Greece and controlled trade from 1600 - 1200 BCE
1400 BCE - Mycaeans invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture and language
"Sea People", Dorians
1200 BCE mysterious "sea people"
invaded Mycenae and burnt palaces
Dorians moved into this war-torn region
- far less advanced
- trade based economy
- writing disappeared for 400 years, no records of what happened with "sea people"
- they didn't trade and isolated themselves from everyone else
Homer
Greek oral tradition - stories passed on by word of mouth
Homer lived at the end of the "Greek Dark Ages"
composed stories of Trojan War c. 750 - 700 BCE
The Illiad - one of the last conquests of the Mycaeans (Trojan War)
The Odyssey - Odysseus attempt to return home, being thwarted by angry god of the sea, Poseidon
The Odyssey was 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter
Did Homer actually exist?
"Homeric question" - Homer may have been a mythical creature
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