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Greece is a small country at the tip of the Balkan Peninsula. These remarkable people may have had a greater impact on human history than any other prople. Greek history begins with the appearance of primitive Greeks tribes known as the Pelasgian (10,000-3,000 BC). They populated Thrace, Argos, Crete, and Halkidiki. e know little about them, but they are mentioned in the accounts of Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides.
The Golden age of Greece centered in Athens brought us great treasures of art, architecture, and literature (500-300 BC). Greece's most stunning achievement was philosophy. For the first time in recorded history, men began to discuss the basic question of who man is and the nature of esistence rather than just accepting religious kant. While the glorues f Athens are best remembered, ironically Sparta provided a template for modern totalitarianism. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian, but spread Greek ideas or Helenism beyond the narrow confines of Greece itself. Christianity developed in the Helenistic-influenced Roman world. The Greeks inspired the Romans which like Greece was a civilization that came to be based on slavery. The Byzantines carried the classical tradition through the Medieval erra where it played a critical role in the Renaissance. The Byzantines also laid the foundations for Orthodox Christianity. The Ottoman Turks finally captured Constantinople (1453). Greece for four centuries was ruled by the Ottomans. One of the results of the French Revolution was the stiring of nationalist sentiment in the Balkans. The Greek ReVOlt was the beginning of the creation of an independent Greece, although it required the intervention of the Great Powers.
Greece may have the longest and richest archaeological record in Europe, The focus was of course on the marvels of ancient Greece, but this has included pre-history dating ten of thousands of years before the Greek Golden age. Given the migration out of humanoids out of Africa , Greece would have been where many of the small migrating bands first ventured into Europe. 【Runnels and Murray】 Greek pre-history began during the later era of the incredibly long Stone Age. The presence of humans in Greece is a a matter of conjecture (some 700,000-160,000 BP). The early presence of humans is based on the findings of stone tools at sites across Greece and Aegean islands (700,000-200,000 BP) The Petralona skull is the earliest actual fossil evidence. It is an early human skull found in a Thessaloniki (northern Greece close to Anatolia) cave complex (600,000-300,000 BP). It was probably Up-right Man (homo erectus or related H. heidelbergensis). The first humans of major importance were the the H. heidelbergensis descendants--the Neanderthals. Other artifacts discovered including tools and bones have also been uncovered in the Pindos mountains (northern Greece and southern Albania). Substantial areas of what is modern Greece were inhabited during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic eras. Humans probably reached Greece as a result of migration from Anatolia. The first area of Greece to be settled appears to be Thessaly. Apidima Cave in southern Greece is also important. Skulls discovered there are also early (about 170,000 BP). The species, however is a matter of conjecture. The Uluzzian people are one of the earliest known dispersal of modern man (H. sapiens) in Europe 43,000-39,000 BP. There are findings at three Greek caves (Kissoura, Kephalari, and Koloninista). The cave locations testify to the technological development. They were contemporaneous with the closing years of the Neanderthals. The early inhabitants of Greece are a probably mythological—people called the Pelasgians for which there is next to no information.
Primitive Greeks tribes known as the Pelasgian appeared (10,000-3,000 BC). They populated Thrace, Argos, Crete, and Halkidiki. We know little about them, but they are mentioned in the accounts of Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides. We do know that agricultural technology from Mesopotamia began to reached Greece through Anastolia (About 9,000 BP). The agriculturists were faced with an invasion of a entirely new people, Indo-Europeans. The expanding Yamnaya swept into Europe on horses and with ox-drawn carts (3,000-2,800 BC). 【Bower】 In only about a century, the Anatolian farming population of northern Europe were gone, replaced by the Yamnaya Steppe population. Unlike northern Europe, where the Yamnaya people drastically altered the gene pool, in southern Europe, especially Greece the Yamnaya hit a 'genetic wall'. 【Kokkinidis】 Macedonia and northern Greece was a different matter.
Even so, Greek is an Indo-European language showing there was an important cultural impact. Soon after writing appeared and the glorious era of ancient Greece began.
Greece is a small country at the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula. They are one of the most studied ancient people. This causes a problem in our understanding of ancient people. Because we know a lot about Greece, Rome, and Egypt it influences our understanding of the ancient world. The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome in many ways were different than other ancient civilizations and occured at he more modern phase of the ancient time spectrum. The remarkable Greeks may have had a greater impact on human history than any other people. The Golden age of Greece centered in Athens brought us great treasures of art, architecture, literature, math, philosophy, and science (500-300 BC). Greece's most stunning achievement was surely philosophy. For the first time in recorded history, men began to discuss the basic question of who man is and the nature of insistence rather than just accepting religious chant. Historians report the ancient Greeks considered children to be miniature adults. There is no indication that the Greeks regarded children as anything different from small-sized adults. By the time a child was about 13 years old, he or she was considered an adult citizen in every respect. Alexander was, for example, involved in military engagements at age 12. There were differences from city to city, especially with Sparta. There were, however, many similarities. Boys and girls were reared very differently. Plato discusses the education of children in The Republic. Boys were educated separately for their future responsibilities as citizens of the state. Women had a different role and have been described as little above slaves. Girls were informally educated in the home by their mothers. Children of both genders often wore no clothing at all when they were very young. There does not appear to have been any specialized garments for children before they began wearing adult garments. Boys spent a lot of time naked in athletic training. While the democratic glories of Athens are best remembered, ironically Sparta provided a template for modern totalitarianism. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian, but spread Greek ideas or Hellenism beyond the narrow confines of the small Greek Peninsula. Christianity developed from Judaism in the Hellenistic-influenced Roman world. The Greeks inspired the Romans which like Greece was a civilization that came to be based on slavery. This gives the impression that slavery was a major condition in the ancient world. Fie example historians for yeas just assumed that slaves were used to build the Egyptian pyramids, which was not the case. The most important human condition in the ancient world dominated by agriculture was a landless peasantry.
The Byzantines carried the classical tradition through the Medieval erra where it played a critical role in the Renaissance. The Byzantines also laid the foundations for Orthodox Christianity. Byzantium is relatively little known in the popular mind. This is somewhat surprosing given its longevity (more than a millenium) and had such a powerful influence on other civilizations from the Scandonavian Rus to the Ottomon Turks. Byzantium is somewhat difficult to place. It is of course the Eastern Roman Empire which broke off from the Western Empire in a gradual procress beginning in the 4th century AD. But as it survived the Barbarian invasions, its history continues into the Medieval era until ovewealmed by the Turks in the 15th century. Thus it is both an Ancient and Medieval civilization with stronger Asian influences that the Western Empire. The Emperor Theodosum I divided the Roman empire when he entrusted his son Arcadius with the Eastern provinces and his other son Honorius with the Western priovinces (395 AD), although a temporary split occurred even earlier. The Western Empire headed by Honorius was soon to be overwealmed by Germanic Barbarians and Huns. The Eastern Empire while sorely pressed first by the Germans and Huns and later by Islam was to endure and often prosper over an amazing span of 1,000 years until it was finally overwealmed by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1453.
The Ottoman Turks finally captured Constantinople (1453). Greece for four centuries was ruled by the Ottomans.
One of the results of the French Revolution was the stiring of nationalist sentiment in the Balkans. The Greek ReVOlt was the beginning of the creation of an independent Greece, although it required the intervention of the Great Powers. The Ottoman Empire conquered Byzantium including Greece and the Christian kindoms of the Balkans in the 15th centurty. As a result, Greece lived under Ottoman rule for four centuries. The Ottomans allowed the Greek to retain their Orthodox Christianity after the conquest. It was not until the French Revolution that the first real stirings for Greek independence began. The Ottomans were not involved in the Napoleonic Wars. The ideas generated by the Revolution did affect their Christian subjects in the Balkans. A Serbs revolt which was temporatily sucessful inspired the Greeks. The Greek revolt less than a decade after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It began in of all places Moldavia, but soon spread to the Peloponnese. From the beginning it was a bloody affair. The revolt was not clearly thought out or centrally led. Greek Christians targeted Muslims, including women and children. The Ottomans responded with massacres of their own. Ottoman excesses were widely reported in the Western press, creating great sympathy for the Greeks. The Greek attrocities were not well reported. The intervention of the Egyptian ruler Ali Pasha almost doomed the Greek rebellion, but the European powers intervened to guarantee Greek independence, eventually insisting that a monarchy be created to govern the country.
The Greeks finally achieved their independence. The new Greek state was recognized by the European powers (1832). There was an independent Greek state, but the European powers that helped created it claimed the right to participate in Greek affairs. In particular they wanted Greece to be a kingdom. They even chose the new king. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was offered the Greek crown, but he declined. Next they chose the son of Ludwig I of Bavaria, Otto of Wittlesbach. He was still a teenagers when he became King Otto of Greece. He did not prove to be a popular choice, but the threat of Great Power intervention kept him on the throne. Otto was only 17 years of age so a Bavarian regency was established to rule the war-devestated county. The Bavarians ruled imperiously, imposing high taxes and attempted to set up a centarlized bureacracy. Some of the German influence in Greece, such as in Greek art and academia, probably originate with the Bavarian monarchy. Greeks complained that they paid higher taxes than they paid under Ottoman rule. Also King Otto who was a Roman Catholic refused to convert to Orthodoxy. And for his wife he declined to marry a Greek which would have neen well received. He instead married a German princess from Oldenburg (1837). The wedding was even held in Germany. The new queen proved unpopular.
A bloodleess revolt occurred in 1843. Otto was compeled to dismiss his Bavarian advisers and accept a democratic constitution. His unpopularity inceased when in 1854 supported France and England when war broke out in the Crimea. An army revolt and subsequent national assembly deposed Otto in 1862. The Great Powers acquised.
The series of wars among the various countries and principalities in thE Balkan Peninsula which occurred between their gaining og independence from the Ottomon Empire and the onset of World War I are collectively known as the Balkan Wars. The efforts of Bismarck to settle the political future of the Balkans, in part to avoid great power conflict did not suceed. A series of wars in the Balkans began almost immediately after the Congress of Berlin (1878) which to varing degrees dragged in the Great Powers. The primary conflict was between Austria-Hungary and Russia for dominance in the Balkans with the weigning power of the Ottomon Empire. There were, however, a range of issues dividing the peopke of the Balkans and the borders of the new states and principalities of the region.
The Allies and Central Powers offered enducements for the Balkan countries to enter the War on their side. The Balkan countries had fought wars just before World War I. The principal targets were Turkey and Bulgaria. Thus when those two countries joined the Central Powers it helped build support for the Allies in Serbia and Romania. Serbia of course had already been attacked by Austria. This World War I in the Balkans was a continuation of the wars begun earlier, but on a wider scale. Greece which had participated in the Balkan Wars, was more reluctant to enter World War I. This was primarily because of King Constantine. Border disputes with Bulgaria meant that there was support for the Allies in Greece. There were also historic ties with Britain because the Royal Navy had played a role in Greek independence during the 19th century. Primeminister Eleftherios Venizelos wanted to join the Allies. King Constantine was against this. The royal family had ties to the Germans. His wife was German, but the King also thought entering the War was not in Greece's interests, especially as it was not at all clear who would win the War and fighting the Turks, Bulgarians, and Austrians seemed a dangerous undertaking. The King even began negotiations with Germany. Primeminister Venizelos resigned (March 5, 1915). About a month later Venizelos won a substantial mandate in national elections (June 1915). Venizelos then persued efforts to join the Allies. He also wanted to support Serbia. King Constantine continued to oppose this. Venizelos resigned again (October 5, 1915). The Bulgarian army moved into northern Macedonia, at the time occupied by Serbia (October 1915). Venizelos saw this an act of war. He formed a government in Crete and challenged the King. The opposition government consisted of Eleftherios Venizelos, Panagiotis Daglis and Pavlos Kountouriotis. The Venizelos Government began recruiting volunteers. An estimated 20,000 men enlisted to fight the Bulgars. The fighting proved difficult in tough mountenaous terraine. As the King anticipated, the Allies provided only limited support. The Allies continued to try to convince King Constantine to formally enter the War. When he refused, French Admiral Dartigue du Fournet blockaded Athens. The King abdicated and left Greece (June 11, 1917). Prince Alexander became king and agreed to work with Venizelos who formed a new government. Greece declared war on the Central Powers Germany (June 29). This opened a new front in the war. The Greeks deployed 250,000 men in Macedonia.
Greek forces with the authorization of the Supreme Allied War Council occupied Adrianople (Edirne), Bursa, and Smyrna (Izmir). The Greeks landed with the support of an Allied flotilla (summer and fall of 1919). The Turks did not resist and the Greek forces advanced to Usak, 175 kilometers inland from Izmir. The Turks did resist the Greek advance into Anatolia. The initial fighting was inconclusive (1920). This changed in 1921. Turkish forced commanded by Ismet Pasha stopped Greek offensives twice at In�n� (January and April 1921). This prevented any further Greek advances. A third Greek offensive drive the Turks back to Sakarya Nehri, only 80 km from Ankara (July 1921). Here Atat�rk took personal command and decisively defeated the Greek Army in a bruising 20-day battle. Greek political developments alienated the British. The French and Italians withdrew from Anatolia (October 1921). The Turks launched an offensive against the Greeks (August 1922). The Turks call it the Battle of the Commander in Chief. The Turks soon reached Izmir, trapping retreating Greek soldiers. Many were evacuated by Allied ships. The Turks then turned to eastern Thrace. Here to get to the Greeks, the Turks faced Allied troops defending the Ottoman Government in Constantinople/Istambul and the Bosphorus/Dardanelles The French Government decided to withdraw its forces. The British prepared to defend their positions. The British did not, however, want a war with Turkey and suggested a compromise. Atat�rk accepted the British-proposed truce. The Armistice of Mudanya (near Bursa) ended the fighting between Greece and Turkey (October 1922). The Greek troops withdrew beyond the Maritsa River. The Turks occupied eatern Thracee. The Turks as part of the Armistice accepted a continued Allied presence on the straits and in Istanbul until a comprehensive peace settlement could be megotiated.
The Turkish victory in the Greek-Turkish War (1920-21) shocked the Greeks and dominated Greek Politics in the inter-War era. It made the National Schism / Ethnikos Dikhasmos (the differences between King Constantine I and Prime Minister Venizelos) divided Greek politics and society throughout the Inter-War Era.
The Greco-Turkish War had serious consequences beyond the the immediate military situation. The loss deligitimized the Government in the eyes of many Greeks. And the country was faced with the massive undertaking to
dead with the flood of displaced refugees from the territory lost in Anatolia. The major international problem was the war with Turkey. There was a smaller problem on the northern border with Bulgaria. Bulgaria could do little in the 1920s because it was one of the defeated Cental Powers. This dispute would prove deadly during World War II.
The political situation was generlly unstable during the inter-War era. Military officers formed a Revolutionary Committee (RC)and staged a coup (1922). The coup was led by Pro-Venizelos colonels Nikolaos Plastiras and Stilianos Gonatas They landed 12,000 troops at Lavrion, south of Athens, and seized conrol of the capital. They forced the government to resign and King Constantine to abdicate. Prince George, Constantine's elder son had refused the crown when Constantine left (1917). This time, he accepted and was crowned king as George II (1922-24). The RC began purging royalists from both the government and the military. The disaster of the war with Turkey had to be dealt with politically. There had blame it on someone. The blame was laid on Prime-Mimister Dimitrios Gounaris, who was in office when the war began. Gounaris and seven of his assocites became scapegoats. The RC charged them with with high treason, six were found gulty and executed. The charge of treason was absurd. They were guilty of incompetence. The trial and executions dramatically changed the political climare resulting in a ferocity not previously known. A rift centered on Venizelod biterly divided the Greek people. In addition the military was politiicized and became a force in Greek politucs. Col. Plastiras formed a government. He used Venizelos to negotiate a peace with Turkey--the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). It recognized the Turkish military victories. Turkey achieved control of Anatolia, eastern Thrace (the area ariound Constninopler, and two small islands off Turkey's northwest coast. Greece and Turkey formulated a huge compulsory exchange of populations. Muslims living in Greece (except the Slavic Pomaks in Thrace and the Dodecanese, and Turkish Muslims in Thrace) were transferred to Turkey--some 0.4 million people. Greek Christians were transferred to Greece--some 1.3 million people. The exchange was comulsiry and based on relgion. The two countries agreed to protect small ninirity populations of Orthodox Greeks and Muslims. The Treaty established the nodertn border between Greece and Turkey. The result was rghe creation into an ethnically homogeneous country, but Greece had the the massive problem of assimilating over 1 million desperately refugees. The Treaty, along with the Aremenian genocude, also made Turkey a moire ethnically homoneniius country. The ionly major minority was the Kurds in the south east. Venizelos sucessfully returned brining a degree of stability (1928-32). The Wall Street Crash in America (1929) resulted in economic dislocations and internal conflicts (1931). The monarch was restored amf King George II returnd. Ioannis Metaxas was a Greek military officer who became heavily involved in politicsafter unsucessfully oposing Greek involvement in World War I. King George was not popular in Greece, but Metaxas offered important support. TheKing appointedc him prime-minister (1936). He governed constitutionally for only 4 months under King George II. He then established a dictatirship -- the 4th of August Regime. Metaxas adopted fashion features along the lines of Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain. Central to all three was opposition to the Communists. Salazar and Metaxas maintained relations with the British, BAZI Germany and Fascist Italy helped Franco win the Spamish Civil War.
talinan dictator Benito Mussolini launched an invasion of Greece on October 28, 1940 from Albania. Mussolini had earlier invaded an occupied Albania in 1939. In contarast to the close coordination that developed among the Allied countries, Mussolini not only did not coordinate his attack with the Germans, but did not even inform them of his plans until the attack was underway. Mussolini assumed that the Greeks woukd easily fall to his conquering army. Greek's small army of 150,000 men not only stopped the Italian thrust toward Salonika using rugged mountaneous terraine to their advantage, but with British assistance including RAF units, drove the Italians back into Albania. The Italain attack had been unwanted by Hitler who was preoccupied with the Battle of Braitan and forming a grand coalition of NAZI satellites, occupied countries, Fascist Spain, and Vichy France for an upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. Mussolini's invasion had turned the sympathetic Metaxis Fascist Government in Greece into a British ally. This was of emense strategic significance because from bases in Greece, the British could threaten the Romanian oil fields--NAZI Germany's primary source of oil. The Greeks by November 1940 had seized Kor��, the principal Italian base in Albania. The lack of martial ardour of Italian soldies during the War is surprising given the pretentions of military greatness by Mussolini and the Fascists which had governed Italy since the 1920s. This was in sharp contrast to Hitler's success in ideoligically preparing the German soldier. The threat to the Balkans and Germny's souther flank forced Hitler to fivert his attention south away from Britain. Hitler forced the Balkan states to join the Axis: Hungary (November 20, 1940), Romania (November 23, 1940), Bulagaria (March 1, 1941), and Yugoslavia (March 25). Had Mussolini not invaded Greece, Hitler may have forced Metaxis into the Axis as well or at least he would have remained neutral and there would have been no British forces threatening the Balkans. The Wehrmacht in April 1941 invaded Greece, quickly defeating the Greek and British armies. While the Germans rapidly achieved their goals, the effort was a dissater fpr the German war effoty. The invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece forced the Wehrmacht to delay operation Barbarossa--the invasion of the Soviet Union. This lead to 4 years of hideous barbarism. The Greeks did not sibmit meekly to Axis (German, Italian, and Bulgarian) occupation and Ressistance groups soon fornmed. The German reactiin was brutal beyond description. The war and the experience of the occupation threw traditional family roles into question as women became breadwinners and children took up arms. NAZI reprisals were severe. The Greek children were especially affected by the German occupation. In addition, the NAZI program of plundering the occupied countries resulting in large quantities of food being shipped from Greece to Germany. This caused a mass famine in Greece. Thousands of children starved.
The Greek Civil War (1944-49) was one of the opening phases of the Cold War which decended on Europe after the defeat of the NAZIs. The German Wehrmacht was in 1944 being relentlessly pushed west by the Soviet Red Army. Rather than being cut off in the Balkans and Greece, the Wehrmacht begam to withdraw in 1944. British troops in 1944 entered Greece as the Wehrmact withdrew north. The Resistance groups attacked the fleeing Germans. Elections return to Greece after the the Germans withdrew in 1944, but were hotly contested. The Communists boycotted the elections and a bloody guerilla campaign that amounted to a Civil War which tore the country apart. The Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) organized by the Greek Communist Party was the strongest force in the Resistance and tried to seize control of Greece. Only 2 months after the departure of the Germans from Athens, the ELAS and British fought strret battles. An armistice was signed with the British in 1945, but a civil war developed among the Greek political parties. The British were weakened by nearly 6 years of War and were unable to fully support the non-communists. Britain which had shouldered enormous costs during the War was essentially a bankrupt nation. Very substantial costs followed the War such as the occupation of Germany and contining respnsibilities in Cyprus, Greece, Palestine, and other countries. This is one reason why rationing had to be continued in Britain after the War. This proved extremely unpopular with serious domestic political consequences. The British also turned to rightest elements in Greece, including some who had collaborated with the Germans. Soon some members of the anti-NAZI Resistance movement were being arrested. The British asked for American assistance. The United States beginning in 1947 began supplying arms to the Greek Government. The Americans helped construct damaged infrastructure like air fields, bridges, docks, railways and communication networks. Fighting in the Civil War continued for 4 years. The Communists finally in 1949 declared a cease fire.
Bower, Bruce. "How ancient herders rewrote northern Europeans’ genetic story, " SciemeNews (January 10, 2024). An international team of researchers describes these results, based on analyses of DNA from more than 1,600 ancient individuals.
Kokkinidis, Tasos. "Greeks are descendants of the Mycenaeans: DNA Study Confirms Greek Reorter (October 8, 2026).
Runnels, Curtis and Priscilla M. Murray. Greece Before History:mAn Archaeological Companion and Guide (2002), 224p. s
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