Greece's Geography

Today in class, we took notes of ancient Greece on Mr. Schick's blog. Below are the notes.

• The world's greatest civilizations... all located on water (usually rivers).

Great civilizations/ Key rivers

• Mesopotamia/ Tigris and Euphrates River
• Egypt/ Nile River
• India/ Indus River
• China/ Huang He River

Greece's geography

• Note the significance of Greece's location
• Describe Greece's topography
• Look at Greece's mountains

The key locations in Greece

• Aegean Sea
• Ionian Sea
• Adriatic Sea (just north of the Ionian Sea)
• Peloponnesus
• Athens
• Sparta
• Creed
• Asia Minor
• Macedonia

Greece is a mountainous peninsula

• mountains cover about 3/4 of Greece
• approximately 2,000 islands in the lonian and Aegean Sea

This combination shaped Greece's culture

• they had many skilled sailors and shipbuilders
• also had farmers, metal workers, weavers, painters, etc.

They had poor/ limited natural resources, so they needed to trade.

It was difficult to unite the ancient Greeks cause of terrain.

• The developed small, independent countries (city-states; that's who they were loyal to.

Although fertile valleys cover one quarter of the peninsula, only about 20% is suitable for farming.

Greek Diet- consists of grains, grapes, olives, and fish.

• Lack of resources most likely led to Greek colonization
• back then, temperatures usually ranged from mid 40s in the winter to low 80s in the summer- although it could get hot in the summer, it was pretty nice year-round.