How were the people of ancient Greece affected by the geography of their homelands?

Answer 1

The Greece's landforms separated many communities from each other so each developed their own customs and beliefs. Each believing it's own land, traditions, and way of life were the best. Even though they all shared a common heritage, spoke the same language, and worshipped the same gods.

Answer 2

The limited arable land in river valleys separated by mountains ensured that separate city-states were developed. When burgeoning populations outstripped the productive capacity of the soil, the city-states shipped their surplus populations off to other coastal sites around the Mediterranean and Black Seas to seize land and establish new city-states, resulting in over 2,000 city states.

Answer 3

The geography of Greece affected its people in a multitude of ways. This list is not exhaustive, but mentions several important ways that the geography affected the Greek development.

1) Minimal Land Travel: The Greek Mainland (Thrace, Epirus, Boetia, Attica, and the Peloponnesus) is among the most mountainous and hilly land in all of Europe, making land travel between the city-state minimal. It also directed their efforts away from expanding their influence primarily over land and explains why non-coastal regions of Greece took the longest to develop.

2) Marine Travel and Naval Strength: Most of the city-states were relatively close to the water, especially those found on Crete, Cyprus, the Dodecanese Islands, or Cycladic Islands. Greek city-states favored marine travel which was more reliable and cost-effective than land travel. As a result, many city-states had strong navies as opposed to having strong armies. (Sparta is the one major exception to that rule.)

3) Chronic Disunity: Because of the prevalence of strong navies, the difficulty of land travel, and the presence of many invasion choke-points (the most famous being Thermopylae), the Greek city-states were never completely unified until Alexander the great conquered them all. (Sparta did defeat Athens in the Peloponnesian War, but only held onto that victory for a very short time. In addition, Sparta never expanded its power into Boetia or over the Cycladic Islands - which would have been the next logical places to expand.)

4) Pastoralism and Fishing: The mountainous terrain made growing crops very difficult. The two crops that the Greeks were able to cultivate were olives and wheat, but wheat was much more difficult to maintain than the olives. This forced Greeks to resort to pastoralism (primarily animal-based agriculture) and they raised goats, sheep, and pigs. As a result, there was a lot of dairy and meat in the Greek diet relative to contemporaneous civilizations (although significantly less than today). In addition, because of the access to the sea, Greek cuisine included vast amounts of shellfish, mollusks, and proper fishes.

The mountains separated the city states, the bays provided fertile land for farming, and the sea provided fishing and trading of sea food.

Answer 4

encouraged the settlement of colonies across the Mediterranean region :D

Answer 5

People were isolated from each other due to all the mountains in Greece.

Answer 6

the difficulty of transportaion led to creation of many isolated communities

Answer 7

Their location directed their options - near the sea allowed fishing, on arable land gave farming, at a port opened up trade.