Mainland Greece is a mountainous land almost completely surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. Greece has more than 1400 islands. The country has mild winters and long, hot and dry summers.
This meant that cities that emerged in the 7th and 8th century BC grew up independently of their neighbors. Thus, unlike the great civilizations of the Middle East (Persia, Babylon), Greek civilization in the classical period grew up as independent "polis" city-states.
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A secondary consideration of the mountainous geography was that there was limited agricultural land for the growing of crops. As the cities grew, the leaders of the Greek states began to concentrate what agricultural land that they had upon "cash crops" like olives for olive oil or grapes for wine. For staples like grain, they encouraged colonies in more suitable areas and took place in large scale trade.
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