Ilustrated History- Ancient Greece

6
WHO WERE THE GREEKS?
Greece is a small, mountainous country. Its rugged landscape
and steep roads made overland communication very
difficult. The Greeks never bothered to build good roads, and
fertile, easily cultivated land was on the rare side. So, from
the beginning, Greek cities depended on trade for survival.
The mountainous terrain isolated the population, so that
while they belonged to a single people, the Greeks of various
regions were very different from each other. They could never
agree for long enough to create empires as large as those of
the Egyptians and Persians.
However, the Greek coastline is dotted with beaches and
natural harbors. In fact, almost every city was near the coast
and had its own harbor. This meant that the Greeks, as a
people, had a very close relationship with the sea.
Greek merchants sailed all over the Mediterranean in
search of buyers for their amphorae of oil and wine. When
the ships returned from their voyages, they brought back to
their cities Egyptian medicine, Persian science, and Phoenician
navigation techniques, to name just a few examples.
Their civilization was always open to new ideas, and they
took art, culture, and science much further than any other
people in the ancient world.