Neolithic Greece

By around 7000 BC there started to be more people in Greece. This may be related to the Black Sea catastrophe which happened about this time. Maybe because of refugees from this disaster, it became harder and harder to get all the food you needed just by gathering and hunting. So people began to farm. Farming was more work (and not as much fun as picking wild berries and nuts), and the food you got wasn't as good for you and was pretty boring, but you could feed more people on less land. People also began to herd sheep and goats.

Once you are farming, you also need to build fences to keep out the deer and rabbits, and to keep in the sheep and goats, and people also began to build houses. Probably there weren't enough caves for all the new people, though people were still living in Franchthi Cave at this time too, and still sailing around in little boats.

By 5800 BC, there was a small village at a place called Nea Nikomedia. The people had small houses made of sticks and mud (wattle and daub). There was a wooden fence around the village to keep out animals (or to keep them in). People had started to use pottery (clay pots). Probably they learned how to make pots from people from West Asia, who came to live in Greece about this time.

Sesklo pottery

Around 4000 BC somebody destroyed the village of Sesklo. Possibly some group of people invaded Greece from the north, from Yugoslavia or Turkey, and took over some parts of Greece. These invading people seem to have had a big military advantage over the Sesklo people: they had bows and arrows, so they could shoot over the stone walls from far away.

These new people then settled down and built villages in Greece. One of these new villages is called Dimini. Dimini had one big house in the center, maybe for the headman of the village, and also had several stone walls around it. (These people also moved back into Nea Nikomedia.)

To find out more about the Greek Stone Age, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your local library:

The Stone Age: What Life Was Like for the Earliest Humans, by Philip Steele (2000). Ages 9-12; includes instructions for projects.

Eyewitness: Early Humans, by Nick Merriman (2000). Ages 9-12, with great pictures.

The Archaeology of Greece: An Introduction, by William Biers (revised edition 1996) This is NOT a children's book, but Biers writes very clearly and has a lot of good pictures.

The Early Neolithic in Greece : The First Farming Communities in Europe (Cambridge World Archaeology), by Catherine Perlès and Norman Yoffee(Editor) (2001).

Early Bronze Age
Main Greek History page

This page was reviewed for accuracy by Ioannis Georganas in March 2005.