Chapter 3 notes

The first European civilization : the Greeks, 2200-400 BC

quote: "within classical Greek civilization there appeared idea, art forms, and types of government whose influence on western civilization has lasted down to the present day" 

• the Greeks began as one of many European barbarian peoples that is, they have distinctive way of life, based on farming and warfare, that was widespread in western Europe 
• the earliest Greek civilization was very much an offshoot of the ways of life of their eastern neighbors.

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 of mythical ties of kinship 

EUROPEAN BARBARIANS

• over three thousand years up to the time of the Persian Empire, civilization had spread from its Sumerian and Egyptian homelands right across southwestern asia and northeastern Africa, and other regions of civilization had also arisen in india, china, and the western hemisphere 

THE EARLIEST EUROPEANS

• even before this historic encounter, the way of life of the peoples of europe had undergone many changes and advances. 

THE BARBARIAN WAY OF LIFE

• The early europeans cannot have had any sense of a common identity but in time most of them came to share a distinctive way of life. 

"when a leading warrior died, his horse 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 on riding, fighting, and drinking as a comrade of the gods in the afterlife"

stonehenge- the most famous of megalithic structures was built by a farming and trading people in the west of England about 2000 BC, contemporary with the beginning of the Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia and the founding of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt. the wealth, skills, and organization to build great monuments were no monopoly of the peoples of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Nile