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How Did Culture Influence Ancient Greek Civilization

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As the Greeks colonized and took over new areas, their art and literature was inspired by the new cultures they found and also helped to inspire many others to take part in the era 's creative revolutions. This impacted math and science as well. Anaximenes came up with a theory of gravity, Xenophanes wrote about his discovery of fossils and Pythagoras came up with his famous Pythagoras theorem. Throughout ancient Greece 's history, there had been no central government or a country named Greece, only city-states. They were all technically Greeks and spoke the same language but they fought against each other and had their own coinage and government and often had wars with each other. There were over a thousand city-states at one time. In Greece, they went through three different types of government: monarchy (having one king or queen that controls everything by themselves), oligarchy (a small group of people that decides on things together) and democracy. Democracy is what we have today, where one person is the main leader, but there are three branches that do different things with the law to decide if it is okay. Then, the people (only male citizens back then) voted and had a huge impact on the resulting laws. Oligarchy is the second form of ruling, …show more content…

The Olympics were a tribute to Zeus, the king of all gods, and went on about every four years for the next one thousand years. They consisted of foot races, wrestling, discus and javelin throwing and chariot races. Other sports were added later. When the Olympics happened, there was a truce between all city-states for the time that the games were held. Women were not allowed to participate in them and married women were not allowed to watch the races because the men competing the races did not wear clothes. The winner of the races got a laurel wreath crown and had a statue built in their

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