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Ancient Greece - The most ancient civilizations
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PERIODS OF THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREECE.
Poetry and prose
FEATURES OF THE ANCIENT GREEK CIVILIZATION.
About the name of the country and Europe.
It is assumed that the first Greeks appeared in the Balkans at the turn of 3-2 thousand BC.
e. Centuries later, this people self called "Hellenes".
The name of the country - Hellas comes from it.
Ancient historians noted that before the Greeks, the country was inhabited by some other people who spoke a different language and were called Pelasgians.
In the Cretan Mycenaean era, the Greeks were called Achaeans (after the name of the country Achaia) or Danaeans.
According to legend, the sons of Hellenes, the ancestor of the Hellenic tribe, were the ancestors of the main Greek tribal associations (Dorians, Achaeans, Aeolians and Ionians).
When the country was assigned the name "Hellas" and the self designation of the Greeks "Hellenes", the question is moot.
The Greeks were originally called only one of the Greek speaking tribes that inhabited the coast of the Balkans facing Italy.
The Romans transferred this name to the entire population of the country.
The ancient Greek designation "Europe" comes from the Semitic root "erebus" or "Iriba", which means" west", as opposed to the designation" Asia "– from the word" asu", meaning"east".
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Periods of ancient Greek history.
The history of ancient Greece (before its conquest by the Romans in the 2nd century BC) is traditionally divided into five periods.
1. Crete of Mycenae.
The name is due to the fact that the leading cultural centers in that era were the island of Crete (Fig. 1) in the Aegean Sea, and then the city of Mycenae on the Greek mainland.
The indigenous inhabitants of Crete were a people conventionally called "Minoans".
They were not Greeks or even Indo Europeans.
The culture of ancient Crete developed in its original pre Greek appearance around 2900-1470 BC.
It was the first European civilization both in its geographical location and in its cultural fullness.
The Minoans were the only people of the Aegean world who managed to transform their primitive culture into a real civilization with a developed bronze industry and the best fleet in the entire Mediterranean at the turn of 3-2 thousand.
In the XVIII century BC, the ruling dynasty of the city of Knossos united the entire island under its rule.
During the same period, fortress settlements appeared in the coastal regions of mainland Greece, then agricultural settlements.
The emergence, flourishing and fall of the Mycenaean civilization of the Achaean Greeks falls on the period of the 16th 12th centuries BC.
In the first half of the 15th century BC, all the centers of culture in Crete suddenly collapsed.
Therefore, it was not difficult for the Mycenaeans to seize the leadership from the Cretans, and then become leaders from southern Italy to the Asia Minor and Middle Eastern coasts.
The so called Trojan War is attributed to the end of the 13th century BC.
Soon after its completion, the Mycenaean palaces and villages turned into ruins forever.
But the circumstances of this have not yet been clarified.
One of the versions is as follows: the migration of Dorians (Dorians) to Greece in the middle of the 12th century BC, who had a lower economic and social level of development than the Achaeans, but were able to process iron.
2. "The Dark Ages", 11-9 centuries.
The culture of this time is known
mainly on the excavation of burial grounds.
During these centuries, no signs of civilization are found on the territory of Greece: the state, writing, monumental architecture, professional art.
3. The Archaic period.
Since the 8th century BC, trade, maritime business, and colonization have been developing.
The cultural centers of that era are Phocea and Miletus (Asia Minor), then Corinth, later Athens rises.
Only a few states could exist without imported bread.
By the end of the 6th century BC, Persia took possession of the straits leading to the Black Sea.
A severe economic and food crisis is coming.
The era is being pumped up by the Greek Persian wars (Fig. 2).
4. The Classical period.
The victory in the above mentioned wars (478 BC) opens the classical period (Fig. 3).
Culture reaches its highest flowering.
From 460 to 371 BC, there was an armed struggle between Athens and Sparta with interruptions, file:///C:/Users/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B3/Desktop/drevnyaya%20grecia/sources/zel.html
other cities.
In 404
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the struggle between Athens and Sparta, other cities.
In 404, Athens surrendered.
Since 378, the Boeotic Union of Cities, headed by Thebes, has been promoted to the first place to fight Persia.
Now Athens is united with Sparta.
The internecine war led to the fact that the primitive monarchical state of Macedonia in 338 BC actually subordinates the whole of Greece.
5. The Hellenistic period.
The next epoch was opened by the campaign of the Macedonian king Alexander against the Persians, it is called Hellenism.
However, after his death, the huge state collapsed, Macedonia and a significant part of Greece formed the Macedonian state.
In 186 BC, Macedonia was divided into four parts and soon became a Roman province.
Greek chronology, calendar and times of day.
It is generally accepted that up to the 6th century BC, each year in each polis had its own name according to the main official of this city (In Athens: "In the archonship of Alcaeus..."), then the chronology was introduced according to the Olympiads.
However, the famous historian of ancient culture and translator M. L. Gasparov argued that the Greeks, diligently memorizing their own chronology from the legendary kings, did not keep any chronology at all( numbering of years), and some historians kept the account of the Olympiads for convenience, there were no such dates in any document.
The Greek year consisted of 12 lunar months, alternately including 30 and 29 days, that is, it was shorter by 11 days of the solar year, so the Hellenes periodically inserted additional days.
The duration of the solar year was determined by Greek astronomers to be 365, 2259 days, which is very close to the one set today.
The Greeks did not have a single calendar: each region or polis adopted its own names of months – about 400 (!) names are known - and its own day from which the year began (from June to December).
Each month was divided into three decades.
The day consisted of six parts that had their own names.
Before the Macedonian conquest, the beginning of the day for the Greeks was a sunset.
Then the day and night were divided into 12 hours, and the length of the hours changed according to the time of the year.
Features of the ancient Greek civilization 1.
The uniqueness of the ancient Greek civilization.
All ancient Eastern civilizations, with all their diversity, are more or less of the same type and in their most essential features and features somehow repeat each other.
Only the Greek civilization is not like anyone else and does not repeat anyone.
2. The exceptional dynamism of the Greek civilization in comparison with all neighboring peoples.
In just five or six centuries (from the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 3rd centuries BC), the Greeks did as much as no other people did.
In just three centuries, they have made a tremendous leap from barbarism to civilization.
The pace of cultural development of Greece has no analogies in ancient history at all.
First
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Greece has no analogies in ancient history at all.
The first scientific works on astronomy, mathematics, medicine, logic, the first historians, geographers, philosophical systems with a variety of schools and directions, literature, the hitherto unsurpassed plastic perfection of sculpture, the first theaters, stadiums, museums, etc.
The Greeks were the discoverers, but at the same time the teachers of the European and Asian peoples for the next centuries.
All of the above is very often called the "Greek miracle".
3. Creation of a qualitatively new type of civilization – universal.
The Greeks were not only ahead of other peoples of the Ancient world in their cultural development, but also created a completely new type of civilization.
The Greek civilization was qualitatively different from all other civilizations of antiquity in that it was in the full sense of the word universal.
For the first time in world history, it has created conditions for the full disclosure of all physical and spiritual capabilities of a person.
If in the countries of the East each person usually performed some one role already assigned to him in advance, then a citizen of the Greek city state (polis) he could be at the same time a politician, a military man, a farmer, a gymnast, compose, participate in philosophical debates, etc.
All types of social and spiritual activity developed more or less evenly in Greece, enriching the general fund of Greek culture.
4. The civilization of the Greeks was the first and only one that focused primarily on man.
It was in Greece that a person first realized himself as a free and unique person.
The level of personal freedom of the Hellenes turned out to be unattainable for all other peoples of antiquity.
With rare exceptions (Sparta) in Greece, there is no universal suppression of the interests of the individual for the sake of the interests of the state, which is so characteristic of the countries of the East, most often embodied in the figure of a despotic king.
The state did not interfere unceremoniously in personal life, there was no total control of the priesthood over the mood and behavior of a single person, which was a distinctive feature of the political regimes and religious life of the Ancient East.
5. The Greek society was an open society, that is, focused on broad contacts with the outside world in order to exchange all kinds of useful information.
Akkadians or Assyrians were interested in neighboring countries either as hotbeds of potential aggression, or as objects of capture and exploitation.
The interest of the Greeks in other peoples was not purely consumer and was not reduced to a simple account of the possibility of appropriating foreign territories, on the contrary, they, extremely inquisitive, sought to comprehend foreign culture, to adopt everything valuable and useful from it.
But the Greeks never copied blindly, they tried to adapt someone else's things to their needs and tastes, to make borrowing an organic part of their own original and unique culture.
So they did with the Phoenician alphabet, Egyptian architecture, Babylonian astronomy.
But by borrowing everything and from everywhere, the Greeks preserved the originality and uniqueness of their own culture and further developed it.
6. The technological basis of the Greek file:///C:/Users/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B3/Desktop/drevnyaya%20grecia/sources/zel.html
civilizations are always
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6.
The technological basis of Greek civilization has always been primitive manual labor.
The basis of the city's prosperity has always been agriculture, primarily agriculture.
It is still a mystery why no myths or legends related to this migration have been preserved.
The Greeks remembered only that it took place in two waves: the first – the Achaeans, the second – the Dorian tribes.
The tribes that came to the Balkans displaced or assimilated the local population.
The real history of Greece 3-2 thousand BC is unknown to us.
Homer in the Iliad applies the names Hellas and Hellenes only to the region in the southern part of Thessaly.
According to legend, Perseus was considered the founder of Mycenae, his mother was Danae, the daughter of the Argos king Acrisius.
It was predicted to him that he would die at the hands of his own grandson.
Therefore, the king ordered Danae to be locked up in a dungeon.
But the inventive Zeus penetrated into the gloomy dungeon in the form of a golden rain.
From the connection of Danae and Zeus, Paris was born.
Then the king puts his daughter and grandson in a casket and throws it into the sea.
Fishermen of one of the islands rescued them and took them to King Polydectus.
At the suggestion of this king, Perseus went to the west, killed Medusa and returned to Argos with Andromeda.
Once, during a competition, Perseus struck an unknown elder with a disk - it turned out to be Akrisius, who had secretly returned to the city.
Dejected by such a death of his grandfather, Perseus lays a number of fortresses near Argos, including Mycenae.
By the way, Hercules is sent from Mycenae to perform his famous twelve feats.
The discoverer of the Minoan culture, A. Evans, formed it on behalf of the mythical Cretan king Minos.
The Mycenaean states were small.
Pylos, for example, is 80 km from north to south and about 50 km from west to east.
The social system of Mycenae is a hereditary monarchy.
The greatest fame in history thanks to Homer was acquired by the son of Atreus - Agamemnon.
(His brother Menelaus married the Spartan princess Elena).
It is likely that this phenomenon is connected with a catastrophic earthquake around 1470 BC on the island of Fera (Santorini): the crater of the volcano (up to one and a half kilometers high) as a result of the eruption fell into the depths of the sea.
Only in the eastern part of Crete, the layer of ash brought by the wind was a meter thick.
The Greeks lived in the cities of Asia Minor until 1922, when they were expelled by the Turks.
The fate of Crete.
After the Romans and Byzantines from 824 to 961 Crete was owned by the Arabs, from where they were expelled by the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros Phokas.
After the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, Crete passed into the hands of the Venetians until 1669, and then the Turks until 1897, when the island gained independence.
After sixteen years, Crete was united with the rest of Greece.
The origins of this "miracle" are seen, in particular, in the following: the transition from the bronze industry to the iron industry (10-9 centuries BC), a favorable geographical location and geopolitical situation (until the second half of the 6th century – the formation of the Persian state - the Greeks remained completely safe, and navigation made it possible to borrow from other peoples what was considered necessary and file:///C:/Users/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B3/Desktop/drevnyaya%20grecia/sources/zel.html
useful), blagodatnaya
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what was considered necessary and useful), the fertile natural environment of the Balkan Peninsula, the coast of Asia Minor and the exceptional natural talent of the Greeks.
The Greek Empedocles brilliantly combined a politician, a philosopher, a doctor and a poet.
It is no coincidence that images of various agricultural products and plants were minted on the coins of a number of cities.
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