World History/Ancient Greece and Alexander the Great

Greece has been occupied for ten thousand years. The Greek archaeologist, Christos Tsountas (1857–1934) discovered a major Neolithic site at the modern day village of Sesklo in Thessaly (central Greece) which dates to the seventh millennium. The Sesklo site was occupied until 1500 BC. From the third millennium the Greek mainland was invaded by tribes of an Indo-European language speaking group who referred to themselves as Hellenes, which arrived in two separate waves and transformed the culture of the region. The first group formed the basis of the Mycenaean culture, which traded as far as Egypt and Lebanon/Syria and fought the Trojan War. The second group, which ultimately formed the Doric subgroup of Greeks, entered after the Trojan War, destroyed Mycenae, and started a dark age which ended with the efflorescence of Greek culture beginning around 600 BC. In early Greek history 'Greece' as we know it today did not exist. Instead, it was a collection of warring city-states (called poleis, singluar: polis) unified only by shared language, religion and culture. Two of the more important poleis were Athens and Sparta, speaking different dialects of Greek; Doric and Ionian, and having different cultural bases and histories. Ultimately, these differences expressed themselves as different forms of government.