History Blog : Greek Civilization

Greek Civilization was the first democracy that we know of. This was the start of western ideas, culture value of individual egalitarianism. They were masters of philosophy, science, fine arts, geography, medicine, legal systems and astronomy. Three seas surround them; Aegean, Mediterranean, and the Ionian Sea, making them a good source for trade. Among the communities they had competition and independent governments like we do today.

A very unique civilization developed and flourished on the island of Crete. The arrival new peoples, technologies and new ideas transformed the small pre-existing Neolithic communities form about 6000 B.C.E., including the mature era of the Minoan period which is dated 2000-1400 B.C.E. In the Mycenaean towns, the most important structure was the palace and, significantly not a temple.

Palace of Knossos was the most important structure on Crete. It was the center of town housing of more than 40,000 inhabitants and held ceremonial, administrative residential, and religious functions. The palace itself was created by and additive design process, its grandness was not from the huge individual rooms but from the presence of hundreds of them. A central sequence of rooms includes a stairway and a throne room. Houses, like the Palace were two or three stories high, with ground floor devoted to storerooms; upper floors boasted windows. The walls of important rooms were painted. The color palette relied heavily on whites, red, black- attractive colors due to the availability and stability of natural pigments. Blues and greens were rare and expensive and reserved for the most important rooms. The rooms are organized around a central courtyard. The palace looked inward toward the courtyard; elaborate exterior facades are not a feature of Minoan architecture. The courtyard was an open place the center of this proto-urban entity. On the perimeter of the urban space stood buildings that were distinguished by the unique Minoan cornice and columns. The columns have a distinctive profile; from a large cushioned capital top they taper toward a narrow base. This profile follows the logic of structure, as the weight of the heavy entablature above is distributed to an increasingly narrow profile.

Minoan history, and its age of grand buildings, came to end around 1400 B.C.E., likely due to and earthquake or a mass movement of people, which set the stage for the next episode in Greek history.

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