Geography of Greece

Here are my notes from this class:
We began with the fact that the worlds greatest civilizations are located on or around water. These are most often rivers. Examples are the Huang He River in China, the Indus river in India, the Nile River in Egypt, finally the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. Next we discussed the geography of Ancient Greece. Important locations to Greece were the Aegean Sea, the Ionian Sea, the Adriatic Sea( just north of the Ionian Sea), the Pelopennesus, Athens, Sparta, Crete, Asia Minor and Macedon. Next we discussed how Greece is a peninsula covered with mountains. These mountains do cover 3/4th of Greece leaving only 20% of the land to be arable or suitable for farming within the fertile valleys. There are around 2000 islands in the Ionian Sea and the Aegean Sea around Greece. The geography impacted the culture by allowing for many skilled sailors, shipbuilders, weavers, farmers, metalworkers, and pottery. The lack of many natural resources due to geography also led to new trades of resources they did have such as olives, grains, grapes, and fish. The lack of resources also led to Greek colonization. Those were also keys parts of their diet. They also developed individual or independent city-states all over Greece which later caused problems for unity. Finally, the climate was very good year round. In the winter the temperature average was around 40 degrees Fahrenheit and in the summer the average temperature was around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I find Greece to be beautiful and its always been a place I wanted to travel to so I am excited to learn about it.