Today in Mr. Schick’s class, we took a test and now we are moving onto a new section. 

The First European Civilization- The Greeks

2200-400 B.C.

·        Within classical Greek civilizations there appeared ideas, art forms, and types of government whose influence on western civilization has lasted down to the present day.

·        The Greeks began as one of many European barbarian peoples, they had a unique way of life, based on farming and warfare that was widespread in Western Europe. 

·        Barbarian is a term used to describe the distinctive way of life based on farming, warfare, and tribal organization that became widespread in Europe beginning around 2500 B.C.

·        Over three thousand years up to the time of the Persian Empire, civilization has spread from its Sumerian and Egyptian homelands right across southwestern Asia, and other regions of civilization had also arisen in India, China, and the Western Hemisphere.

·        Even before the historic encounter, the way of life of the peoples of Europe had undergone many changes and advances.

·        By 4000 B.C., farming and village life had spread throughout the continent

·        By 3500 B.C., there were peoples in Western Europe who were numerous and well organized enough to construct ceremonial monuments consisting of circles and rows of huge upright boulders.

·        Megaliths are massive rough cut stones used to construct monuments and tombs.

·        The most impressive single early European achievement was the Stonehenge, a huge open-air monument built by a prosperous farming and trading people in the West of England.

·        From 2500 B.C. onward, Indo-European peoples moved into Europe just as they did into Asia Minor and Persia.

·        The peoples of the region began to speak languages of Indo-European origin that were the distant ancestors of Greek and Latin.

·        When a leading warrior died, his horses and chariot, his bronze swords and daggers. And his gold and silver drinking cups would all go to the grave with him.

·        Next to the warrior would lie his wife, with her jewelry and her fine textiles and utensils so that she could go fulfilling into the afterlife.

·        They lived in villages or in big farmsteads that housed several related families.

·        Groups of villages or farmsteads formed tribes and held together common interests, traditions, and real or mythical ties of kinship.

·        Tribes are a social and political unit consisting of communities held together by common interests, traditions, and real or mythical ties of kinship.

·        Tribes formed loose alliances under warrior kings or queens of exceptionally powerful tribes.

·        Europe became to be inhabited by peoples who spoke mostly Indo-European languages, who were skilled in farming, metal working, trade and warfare.

·        Over a period of three thousand years from 2000 B.C. right down to A.D. 1000, the European barbarian peoples came into contact with civilization.

·        The first such European barbarian people to make contact with civilization were the Greeks.

·        The Greeks developed a distinctive civilization of their own which was the first to emerge in Europe, and the first that counts as definitely “Western”.