Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, [18] or possibly earlier. [19] The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, [20] making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language. [21] Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the ...
Ancient Greek civilization, the period following Mycenaean civilization, which ended about 1200 BCE, to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BCE. It was a period of political, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements that formed a legacy with unparalleled influence on Western civilization.
Greek at a glance Native name: ελληνικά (elinika) [eliniˈka] Language family: Indo-European, Hellenic Number of speakers: c. 13 million Spoken in: Greece, Albania, Cyprus, and a number of other countries First written: 1500 BC Writing systems: Linear B, Cypriot syllabary, Greek alphabet Status: official language of Greece, an official language of Cyprus, officially recognized as a ...
Map of the Greek City-states c. 500 BCE Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND) Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas or Ellada, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Ancient Greece is the birthplace of Western philosophy (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), literature (Homer and Hesiod), mathematics (Pythagoras and Euclid), history (Herodotus), drama ...
Greek culture and identity reflect the shared history and common expectations of all members of the nation-state, but they also reflect an ethnic history and culture that predate the nation-state and extend to Greek people outside the country's borders.