Natural Setting and Resources

The Aegean (this term will be used to cover the territory of modern Greece together with Turkish Thrace and the western coastal regions of Anatolia) is a naturally self-contained unit, almost shut off from the rest of the Mediterranean by a chain of islands centring on Crete. It is full of islands and peninsulas, offering encouragement to sea travel. Prominent mountain ranges close in the land along the coasts, enhancing a natural tendency to look towards the sea, and divide the terrain into many natural subdivisions; the most extensive and fertile regions are to be found in northern Greece and western Anatolia, but there are many smaller patches of reasonably fertile land, and the hill country provides useful pasture. The region is not rich in resources, but there are useful metal sources here and there. Melos has abundant supplies of obsidian (desirable because it can be worked into very sharp blades), and good workable stone and clay are widespread. The whole region is tectonically unstable and prone to earthquakes; the southern Cycladic islands are volcanic in origin, but only Thera (Santorini) has continued to be active into historical times.

Since the Ice Age the mild “Mediterranean” climate with long, hot, dry summers and mild, wet, normally frost-free winters has prevailed, but there are many local variations, influenced by position (the western Greek mainland is wettest, the central and southern Aegean islands driest) and height above sea level. Originally there will have been more woodland in some places, and good sources of water were almost certainly more widespread. But soil was already being eroded from the higher mountains before the end of the Ice Age; areas that are dry and barren-looking now were probably not too different when human population first began to spread.