Aim: How did Geography effect the development of Ancient Greece?

Do Now: What major geographical features dominate the Greek world?



Vocabulary:

1. city-state :An independent state consisting of a city and its surrounding lands.

2. cultural diffusion :The spreading of ideas through contact such as trade or war.

3. culture :The shared beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a particular nation or people

4. democracy :A system of government in which the citizens hold the legislative, judicial, and executive power, based on majority rule.

5. slave :A person forced to work for another with no payment or freedom to seek work elsewhere. A slave can be bought and sold.



Greece:

The high, rugged mountains in Greece led to the isolation of its people.

What developed as a result, were many small city-states; meaning a city and all of the land it could control.

That means very little cultural diffusion happened.

In other words, very few ideas were making their way around the country.
In turn, all that isolation led to the adoption of very different social, cultural and political laws and traditions.

Athens, for example, tried several forms of government before settling on a limited form of direct democracy. Under this system, only eligible citizens were able to participate in government.
Athenian justice has sometimes been criticized as harsh and/or un-democratic because so many people were excluded from voting. Women, slaves, men under a certain age, and all men who did not own land were barred from participation in Athenian government. As you might expect, wealthy landowners controlled the politics, and probably very little changed.
Despite what appear to be shortcomings to the modern observer, Athens must be remembered as the first democracy in the western world.