The beginning of ancient history: Greece’s nature and its first civilizations

Ancient Greece included the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the Peloponnese and many islands in the Aegean Sea. About a third of the land is mountains; the highest is Olympus. Fertile land existed only in valleys, and the Greeks practised farming and herding and later seafaring and trade. In the 2nd millennium BCE the first city-states appeared on Crete and in southern Greece: the Cretan civilization is called Minoan after the legendary King Minos (its centre was Knossos). It was damaged by a strong volcanic eruption, earthquake and flooding; then the Achaeans from the mainland created their own state at Mycenae. At the end of the 12th century BCE the Dorians invaded from the north and ended the Mycenaean state; later Sparta appeared. The islands and convenient bays of the Aegean encouraged the Greeks to take up seafaring. At first they sailed near the coast and from island to island; later, with sailing ships, they reached Egypt and the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. The Greeks called the inhabited world the “Oikoumene”. The Greek period is also called “classical (antique) history”.