Ancient Greek Environment
Greece, unlike Egypt or Mesopotamia, is not a place that is easy to live in.
The combination of good sailing and lousy farming tends to make Greeks try to get a living from the sea. This can take several forms. First, Greeks fish a good deal. Second, they sail trade routes from one city to another, both Greek cities and elsewhere, all over the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and make a living buying and selling things. Third, Greeks hire themselves out as soldiers to fight for other people around the Mediterranean, especially in Western Asia and Egypt (where there is money to pay them). And, less attractively, Greeks also often turn to piracy or raiding to make a living, as in the Trojan War.
Another important aspect of the Greek environment is that it is very unstable. Greece is smack-dab in the middle of a very active volcanic zone, where the Europe tectonic plate meets the Africa tectonic plate. There are several active volcanoes, and earthquakes are also very common. There is a nervous feeling that there could be a natural disaster at any time. This got the Greeks interested in a particular kind of religion which we call oracles. Oracles are the gods speaking to people, often in the form of minor earthquakes, and the gods tell the people what is going to happen in the future.
One final observation: the Greek landscape does not look the same today as it did in the Bronze Age. There used to be quite a lot of trees on the hillsides of Greece, but people cut most of them down, and now the hills of Greece are mostly bare, or have little bushes on them. Nobody is quite sure when exactly the trees were cut down, but very likely it has to do with the beginning of using iron in Greece, around 800 BC. You have to heat iron very hot (1537 degrees Centigrade) in order to melt it, and that takes a lot of wood fires.
Yeah, but what was the weather like? - Click here
To find out more about the environment in ancient Greece, check out these books from Amazon.com or your local library:
Greece the Land (Lands, Peoples & Cultures), by Sierra Adare (1998). For kids ages 9-12. Geography, climate, and more.
Ecology of the Ancient Greek World, by Robert Sallares (1991). Not easy going, even for adults, but very interesting.
Here's a link to find out what the weather is like in Greece right now: Holiday Weather - We provide Greek Weather forecasts.
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