The First European Civilization: The Greeks

Chapter 3

• Barbarians are people that had a distinctive way of life, based on farming and warfare. 
• "Within classical Greek civilization there appeared ideas, art forms, and types of government whose influence on western civilization has lasted down to the present day."
• The earliest Greek civilization was very much an offshoot of the ways of life of their eastern neighbors. 
• Citadel and Shrine: the Athenian Acropolis was already ancient when its temples were rebuilt after Persian invaders destroyed them in the 5th century
• Barbarian-a term used to describe the distinctive way of life based on farming, warfare, and tribal organization that became widespread in Europe beginning around 2500BC
• Megaliths: massive rough-cut stones used to construct monuments and tombs
• Tribe: a social and political unit consisting of a group of communities held together by common interests, traditions, and real or mythical ties of kinship
• Over tree thousand yrs. up to the time of the Persian Empire, civilization had spread from its Sumerian and Egyptian homelands right across southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa
• Even before this historic encounter, the way of life of the peoples of Europe had undergone many changes and advances
• The early Europeans cannot have had any sense of common identity, but time most of them came to share a distinctive way of life
• "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- presumably so that he could go riding, fighting, and drinking as a comrade of the gods in  the afterlife."
• People began to speak languages of Indo-European origin that were distant ancestors of Greek and Latin
• Stonehenge: the most famous megalithic structures was built by a farming and trading people in the west of England
• About 2200bc a distinct civilization, known today as Minoan arose on the Aegan island of Crete
• The Master of the Animals: this Cretan gold pendant made about 1700BC shows a powerful being with geese in each hand and bull's horn looming behind him
• Mycenaean civilization lasted shortly after 1200BC
• The Greeks settled in mainland Greece