西方文化入门课件

I. Greek history
•Stone age• Greek History { Bronze age •
Iron age
II. Greek Environment
• Greece, unlike Egypt or Mesopotamia, is
not a place that is easy to live in. • 1. mountainous • 2. coastline • 3. unstable • 4. trees
Ancient Greece
• • • • • • • • •
I. Greek History II. Greek Environment III. Processing of Greek Civilization IV. Greek Culture 1. Greek Mythology 2. Greek Philosophy 3. Literature 4. History 5. Art and Science
I. Greek history
• Greece is a much harder place to live than Egypt,
because the soil is not as good and there is not always enough water to grow plants for food. So people did not move there until a lot of centuries later. Our first evidence of real settlement in Greece comes from about 55,000 BC (57,000 years ago). Even then there were not very many people until around 3000 BC. Greek history is usually divided into a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age. Sometimes people divide each of these periods into smaller periods as well.
1. mountainous
• The soil is not very good for growing
things, there are a lot of mountains that make it hard to walk from one place to another, and there is never enough fresh water. Because of this, people did not settle in Greece as early as they moved to Egypt and the Fertile Crescent
2. coastline
• On the other hand, what Greece does have is a lot of coastline
(beaches). No part of Greece is more than about forty miles from the sea: a couple of days walking. Plus there are a lot of small islands as well. So when people did come to live in Greece, they were sailors, and the Greeks have always spent a lot of time sailing on the ocean. The combination of good sailing and lousy farming tends to make Greeks try to get a living from the sea. This can take several forms. First, Greeks fish a good deal. Second, they sail trade routes from one city to another, both Greek cities and elsewhere, all over the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, and make a living buying and selling things. Third, Greeks hire themselves out as soldiers to fight for other people around the Mediterranean, especially in Western Asia and Egypt (where there is money to pay them). And, less attractively, Greeks also often turn to piracy or raiding to make a living, as in the Trojan War
Chapter 1 Ancient Greece
• Ancient Greek culture plays an essential
role in the world culture. Ancient Greek culture has provided the creative energy and prototypes for later forms of Western society. Intellectual and cultural achievements, together with social and economic developments in ancient Greece and its neighbouring areas, mark the real beginning of Western civilization.