Have you heard of Zeus? The famous Greek God of Thunder, the King of the Gods, and everything. Pretty famous right? But do you know that he served beer to his father (who’s lord of all time btw) for centuries? And columns, do you know that building large pantheons, a lot of which can be seen in famous buildings and landmarks all over the world, originated from Greece. The ancient Greek civilization has been influencing the whole world for centuries, yet only a few actually know the history behind it. Now, it isn't possible to summarise one of the largest civilizations of this world into 500 words, so I’ll try to keep it interesting (you don’t wanna hear me rambling about history).
The start of this massive civilization started with the end of one. As the Mycenaean civilization fell, the Greek civilization started emerging from the dark ages. This was around the 8th century BC. This was over 2700 years ago. For comparison, it is about 500 human lifetimes. One of the most famous Greek cities, Athens, was set up in 3000 BC on the Acropolis rock and due to its location, It soon rose to be a major location of the Mycenaean civilization. It was founded when King Theseus united many Attica settlements into one city-state, which greatly increased its political importance. As Athens grew, it became a major center for arts and literature and even philosophy. Its political importance also grew as the Romans and Jews fought over it a lot before it was converted into a city-state by the greeks. Athens isn't the only major city in greek though, Sparta, famous because of the movie 300, was one of the major cities of Greece, including Corinth, Thebes, Syracuse, and many others.
Greek Mythology played an important role in shaping the civilization, so let’s look into that too. At the beginning of the universe, according to the Greeks, there was only Chaos, a primordial being. After him, from a light appeared Gaia, mother earth, and Ouranos, the sky. This is where it starts getting complex (and, honestly, a bit weird). The Earth and the Sky then had children, go figure, who were called Titans. Now there were a bunch of titans, but you really only need to know about Kronos, the Titan of time. He was the one who cut up his father, who was literally the sky (just reminding you) into pieces on his mother’s request, and took control of the world. Now, this is where we see the first appearance of our famous gods. Trigger warning, things are about to get even weirder, so I recommend you stop eating. So back to the story, Kronos married Rhea, who was also a Titan, and his sister, and then he remembered a prophecy given to him by his father, which said that Kronos would be overthrown by his children, so when his first child was born, he, wait for it, ate her. Yep, he ate his first child, and the next five too, until Rhea, fed up of her husband eating her children, took away Zeus and fed Kronos a rock, and the lord of time couldn't distinguish between a rock and a child. Zeus grew up secretly until he was strong enough to overthrow Kronos, he then poisoned his drink and cut open his stomach, and also saved his brothers and sisters, who apparently grew up in their father’s stomach. After this, a war started between the gods and titans, which the gods won. This gave us the 12 major gods of Greek mythology.
The Greeks have given us a lot, from ideas as progressive as democracy, to entertainment options such as ‘The Olympics’. Every four years all the Greek city-states sent their young men and women to compete in these games just like the hunger games. The city planning in Greece is still appreciated, and it's still very similar to how we live. The poor lived in multi-story blocks of apartments, while well-off craftsmen and farmers lived in larger and better houses. The Greek Civilization fell to the Romans in 146 BC, but it never truly died. For years it has survived through art, literature, philosophy, architecture, and a lot of inventions. And they still live in the stories and legends. They have given us heroes like Hercules, and philosophers like Aristotle. So, apart from the weird father killing amongst the gods, the Greek civilization has left a large impression on the modern world.
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