Greece
- Greece, also known as Hellas and officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία), is a country in southeastern Europe.
- Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the twelfth longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft).
Modern Greece traces its roots to the civilisation of ancient Greece, generally considered the cradle of Western civilization. As such, it is the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, the Olympic Games, Western literature and historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, university education, the first coin, and Western drama, including both tragedy and comedy. This legacy is partly reflected in the seventeen UNESCO World Heritage Sites located in Greece, ranking Greece 7th in Europe and 13th in the world. The Modern Greek state was established in 1830, following the Greek War of Independence.
A developed country with an advanced, high-income economy and very high standards of living (including the 22nd highest Human Development Index in the world as of 2010), Greece has been a member of what is now the European Union since 1981 and the eurozone since 2001, NATO since 1952, and the European Space Agency since 2005. It is also a founding member of the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.
Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus, Greece's most significant port).
History of Greece
- The history of Greece encompasses the history of the territory of the modern state of Greece, as well as that of the Greek people and the areas they ruled historically. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied much through the ages, and, as a result, the history of Greece is similarly elastic in what it includes. Each era has its own related sphere of interest.
- The first (proto-) Greek-speaking tribes, known later as Mycenaeans, are generally thought to have arrived in the Greek mainland between the late 3rd and the first half of the 2nd millennium BC--probably between 1900 and 1600 BC. When the Mycenaeans invaded there were various non-Greek-speaking, indigenous pre-Greek people, practicing agriculture, as they had done since the 7th millennium BC.
- At its geographical peak, Greek civilization spread from Greece to Egypt and to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. Since then, Greek minorities have remained in former Greek territories (e.g., Turkey, Albania, Italy, and Libya, Levant, Armenia, Georgia etc.), and Greek emigrants have assimilated into differing societies across the globe (e.g., North America, Australia, Northern Europe, South Africa, etc.) Nowadays most Greeks live in the modern state of Greece (independent since 1821) and Cyprus.
- The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Mycenaean Greece, continuing most notably into Classical Greece, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern successor the Byzantine Empire. Foreign occupiers such as the Ottoman Empire, medieval Latin kingdoms, the Venetian Republic, Genoese Republic, and British Empire have also left their influence on modern Greek culture, but historians credit the Greek war of independence with revitalising Greece and giving birth to a single entity of its multi-faceted culture.