Download Ancient Greece Lesson 1

Ancient Greece
Lesson 1
Geography of
Ancient Greece
Vocabulary
• Peninsula
• Harbor
• Mediterranean Sea
• Crete
• Rhodes
• Attica
• Peloponnesus
• Phoenicia
Read Aloud
• “The good Odysseus…spread his sail: seated he
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steered…Seventeen days he sailed across the sea, on
the eighteenth he saw that he’d drawn close to
shadowed peaks; he now was near the coast of [an]
island; in the mist that land took on the likeness of a
shield.”
About 2700 years ago Greeks first began listening to
the one above, of a poet named Homer. Homer’s stories
about Odysseus helped the ancient Greeks imagine a
distant age much different from their own. They also
express the strong connection the people of ancient
Greece felt with the sea (Banks, 2001, p.192).
The big picture
• China – 1500 BC – Shang Dynasty
• Egypt – 1500 BC – Pharaohs building along
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Mediterranean
Greece – a civilization 1000 years old
Unlike others:
– No great river
– No silt
– Instead
• Rocky landscape
• Surrounded by the sea
Mountains and Seas
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Southern European mainland
400 islands
Crete – biggest island
Rhodes
– east of Crete
near Turkey
ideal rest stop between Greece and Asia
Mainland Greece
– One out of every nine acres = mountains or
hills
– Travel difficult
– Little farmable land
Land Along the Coast
• Sections of Greece
– Attica
• Farm land
• Wedge-shaped peninsula, an area of land nearly surrounded
by water
• Natural harbors, sheltered place along a coast
– Epirus – upper section of mainland Greece
– Peloponnesus
• Giant hand reaching toward Crete
• Thin band of fertile area
• Several rivers that dry up in the summer
Map Work
Geography’s Impact on life
• 1. Method of quickest transportation
because of mountains
• 2. How long is Crete?
• 3. In what direction would someone travel
to move from Crete to Rhodes?
• P. 193
Early Economy in Greece
• Made a living from little fertile soil
• Agriculture in Ancient Greece
– Hot summers
– Wet and windy winters
– Crops
• Wheat and barley for bread
• Major crops
–Olives and grapes
–Shrubs help with sheep, goats, and
cattle
• Timing - plow at the right time
Crossing the seas
• Land’s limitation led men to the sea
• Sailed to
– Egypt to trade
– Phoenicia – today’s Lebanon
– Ports across the Mediterranean Sea
• Mainly traded
– Exported olive oil
• Cooking
• Lamp fuel
– Imported grain
Why It Matters
• Cradle of civilization
• Influence of ancient cultures remains
today
MAIN IDEAS
• Unlike the Nile and Huang River valleys, Greece
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has land that is hilly and rocky, making farming
difficult in most areas.
Ancient Greeks used the Mediterranean Sea as a
“highway” to trade for goods they could not
produce themselves
Olive oil – a product of a crop that grows well in
Greece’s rocky soil-became valuable to trade for
grain.
Think About It
• Why was farming a challenge in Greece? Why
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was timing important?
Contrast the geography of Greece with that of
an ancient river valley civilization such as
Mesopotamia or the Indus Valley.
How did ancient Greeks use the sea to spread
their products and culture to other regions?
What effects did geography have on the ways
ancient Greek met their needs?
Draw a map of the Mediterranean Sea region.
Draw in arrows to show where ancient Greeks
sailed.
Effects of geography
• Effect one
• Effect two
• Effect three