2. The history of Greece encompasses the history of the territory of the
modern state of Greece, as well as that of the Greek people and the areas
they ruled historically. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied
much through the ages, and, as a result, the history of Greece is similarly
elastic in what it includes. Each era has its own related sphere of interest.
The first Greek-speaking tribes, known later as Mycenaeans, are generally
thought to have arrived in the Greek mainland between the late 3rd and the
first half of the 2nd millennium BC--probably between 1900 and 1600 BC[
When the Mycenaeans invaded there were various non-Greek-
speaking, indigenous pre-Greek people, practicing agriculture, as they had
done since the 7th millennium BC.
At its geographical peak, Greek civilization spread from Greece to Egypt
and to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. Since then, Greek
minorities have remained in former Greek territories
(e.g., Turkey, Albania, Italy, and Libya, Levant, Armenia, Georgia etc.), and
Greek emigrants have assimilated into differing societies across the globe
(e.g., North America, Australia, Northern Europe, South Africa, etc.)
Nowadays most Greeks live in the modern state of Greece (independent
since 1821) and Cyprus
3.
4. The Greek language is the official language of the Hellenic
Republic and has a total of 15 million speakers worldwide; it is an
Indo-European language. It is particularly remarkable in the
depth of its continuity, beginning with the pre-historic Mycenaean
Greek and the Linear B script, and maybe the Linear A script
associated with Minoan civilization, though Linear A is still
undeciphered. Greek language is clearly detected in the
Mycenaean language and the Cypriot syllabary, and eventually
the dialects of Ancient Greek, of which Attic Greek bears the
most resemblance to Modern Greek. The history of the language
spans over 3400 years of written records.
Greek has had enormous impact on other languages both
directly on the Romance languages, and indirectly through its
influence on the emerging Latin language during the early days
of Rome. Signs of this influence, and its many
developments, can be seen throughout the family of Western
European languages.
5. Classical Greece
The Temple of Hephaestus in Athens is the best-preserved of all ancient
Greek temples.
Classical Athens may be suggested to have heralded some of the same
religious ideas that would later be promoted by Christianity, such as
Aristotle's invocation of a perfect God, and Heraclitus' Logos. Plato
considered there were rewards for the virtuous in the heavens and
punishment for the wicked under the earth; the soul was valued more
highly than the material body, and the material world was understood to
be imperfect and not fully real (illustrated in Socrates's allegory of the
cave).
Hellenistic Greece
Alexander's conquests spread classical concepts about the divine, the
afterlife, and much else across the eastern Mediterranean area. Jews and
early Christians alike adopted the name "hades" when writing about
"sheol" in Greek. Greco-Buddhism was the cultural syncretism between
Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, which developed in the Indo-Greek
Kingdoms. By the advent of Christianity, the four original patriarchates
beyond Rome used Greek as their church language.
