Greek History
Greece is a much harder place to live than Egypt, because the soil is not as good and there is not always enough water to grow plants for food. So people did not move there until a lot later. Our first evidence of real settlement in Greece comes from about 55,000 BC (57,000 years ago). Even then there were not very many people until around 3000 BC. Greek history is usually divided into a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age. Sometimes people divide each of these periods into smaller periods as well.
Stone Age Greece
Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic)
-ca. 20,000-7000 BC
New Stone Age (Neolithic) ca. 7000-ca. 3500 BC
Bronze Age Greece
Middle Bronze Age Greece - ca. 2100-ca. 1600 BC
Late Bronze Age Greece (Minoans and Myceneans) - ca. 1600-ca. 1200 BC
Iron Age Greece
Archaic Period Greece - ca. 900-510 BC
Classical Period Greece - 510 - 404 BC
Hellenistic Period Greece - 404-146 BC
Roman Period Greece - 146 BC -ca. 400 AD
Byzantine Period Greece - ca. 400-1453 AD
To find out more about Greek history, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your local library:
Oxford First Ancient History, by Roy Burrell and Peter Connolly (1997). Lively interviews and pictures make the ancient Mediterranean come to life. For middle schoolers.
The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, by John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray (2001). For college students.
A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture, by Sarah Pomeroy and others (2004). This one might be a little more politically progressive than the Oxford history.
