- Ancient Greece was not a united country but rather a collection of separate lands inhabited by Greek-speaking people, with the Minoans ruling Crete and Indo-Europeans settling mainland Greece. - The sea was integral to Greek civilization as most Greeks lived around the sea and used it for transportation and trade to connect to other societies, important due to Greece's lack of natural resources. - Rugged, mountainous terrain divided Greece into small regions and made overland travel difficult, influencing independent political communities and limiting arable land to about 20% of the total, restricting population size and basic subsistence farming.