Video: How was Ancient Greece organised?

﻿- Hello there my fellow historians, and welcome to this first lesson on the unit on ancient Greece. My name is Mr. Petroxa and I am extremely excited to be teaching you this unit. When I was in school a long, long time ago, as you can tell by my many wrinkles, I was absolutely fascinated about learning about this period of history. There are so many interesting things to learn about the ancient Greeks, and I can't wait to share everything I know with you, as well as learn some new things myself. Let's get started by looking at the question we will be answering in this lesson. The question that we going to answer is: how was ancient Greece organised? Let's have a look at the lesson structure. We're going to begin with the star words. I'm going to share some key vocabulary with you. Then we'll have a look at where Greece actually is; we're going to try to find it on a map. Then I'll tell you a little bit about Greece's geography. And then we'll have a look at the Greek city-states. And then at the very end is the end of lesson quiz. And the end of lesson quiz is always going to come at the end of each lesson. So make sure you do that, as it's going to help you to recap all of the learning that you do. Let's now look at the things that you're going to need. You're going to need your exercise book or a piece of paper where you can write some notes. You're going to need a pencil or a pen, and then you're going to also need a ruler. If you haven't got those things, go and get them now. Be quick. Super speedy guys. Let's now look at the key star words. We've got five words. We've got geography, port, polis, government, and democracy. Let's begin with geography. And geography, are the physical features of an area on the Earth surface. The physical features of an area on the Earth surface, that is referred to as geography. Then we have port. A port is a place where ships load and unload cargo. A place where ships load and unload cargo is known as a port. Good job. Next one. We've got a polis. My turn and your turn. Polis. Polis. Good job. And a polis is a city state, which is like a small country within the region of Greece. Then we've got a government. A government is a type of system by which a community, a state or a nation is governed. The government is a type of system by which a community, state or nation is governed. Good job. And last we got democracy. And a democracy is a form of government in which power rests with the people, either directly or through elected representatives. Let's begin by finding Greece. Now in this unit, we're going to study the history of ancient Greece. You might think, well, why are we studying about ancient Greece? And the reason for that is that ancient Greece is one of the greatest and most influential civilizations that has been in history. The ancient Greeks were great thinkers. They were great warriors. They were great writers, actors, athletes, artists, architects, and politicians. And their achievements have left a lasting imprint on the world. This is why ancient Greece is sometimes known as a classical period or classical antiquity. Because of its great achievements, and long lasting influence over the rest of the world. But, do you guys know where Greece is? Here, I'm showing you a map of a continent. What continent do you think I'm showing you a map of? That's right. It's the continent of Europe. What countries can you recognise on this continent? Can you recognise the UK? Point to the UK. If you said the UK is this island here, then you are absolutely right. Now that we know that, now we can recognise where the UK is. Have a go. Where do you think Greece might be? That's the United Kingdom. You maybe have been into Greece on holiday. Ready? Three, two, one. And Greece is? Over here. If you pointed at Greece on the map, awesome job. Well done. Well found. The red shaded part shows modern Greece. So let's zoom in. You ready? Three, two, one, zoom in. Now, modern Greece. Greece today is a country in South Eastern Europe; and it has a population of around 10.9 million people. And it's capital is the city of Athens. The capital is the city of? Athens. Good job. And Athens has a population of approximately three million people. Let's have a look at your very first task on the unit on ancient Greece. Here you got to complete the sentence. Modern Greece is located in South East... What continent is Greece in? Have a think. Have a go. Pause the video and complete these task. Did you get it right? Tell me that you got it right. Are you ready? Three, two, one. Modern Greece is located in South East Europe. Awesome job guys. Well done. Now let's have a look. Modern Greece is surrounded by three seas. It's surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Ionian Sea. Let's try and find them on the map. You got the Mediterranean Sea here. You got the Aegean Sea, and you got the Ionian sea. So three seas surround modern Greece. The mainland of Greece is 80% mountains, and it's surrounded by more than 1000 smaller islands. This is the Greek mainland here. And then you can see around the mainland, there are around 1000 islands. Now, Greece enjoys hot summers and enjoys mild winters. So that in ancient times, people actually spent a lot of time outside working and chatting with their neighbours. Next question, how many seas is modern Greece surrounded by? Is modern Greece surrounded by two seas? Is it surrounded by three seas? Is it surrounded by four seas? Is it surrounded by five? Have a think. How many seas is modern Greece surrounded by? A, B, C or D. At this point, pause the video, and then have a go. Let's see if you remembered how many seas modern Greece is surrounded by. How many seas is modern Greece surrounded by? It is surrounded by, A, B, or C, D? It's B. It's surrounded by three seas. So modern Greece is surrounded by three seas; the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Ionian Sea. Excellent job guys. Well done. I'm going to leave this answer up so that you can copy it down, and you can check it against your own. Awesome job class. Well done. Let's continue learning about Greece's geography. In ancient Greece, so now we're moving back to ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, communication and long journeys by land, were really difficult because of the mountainous terrain. And the mountainous terrain actually made travel also very difficult. And it was really difficult to farm on the rocky hillsides, so fishing and trade became really important part of people's daily lives. And a very famous ancient Greek philosopher and writer called Plato once wrote, that the Greeks did not live on the land, but around the sea, like frogs on a pond. Due to Greece's mountainous geography, it was really difficult to farm. It was really difficult to travel. It was really difficult to communicate between the travel, and therefore the seas and ports, and fishing, and sailing became really important part of their lives. Let's now look at this answer here. What specific feature of Greece's geography made farming, travel and communication difficult? What is it about Greece's geography that made all those things really difficult, back in ancient times? Have a look. Have a go. Pause the video and complete this task. Let's have a look. Ready? What specific feature of Greece's geography made farming, travel and communication difficult? The answer is Greece's mountainous terrain made farming, travel, and communication difficult. Meaning that the seas and ports became an important part of everyday life. So the specific feature that made all those things difficult is the mountainous terrain. Again, at this point, I'm going to pause the video. You can pause the video too to check your answer against mine. Let's move on. Now that we know where Greece is. Greece we know it's in South Eastern Europe, we know a little bit about its geography, we know it's surrounded by three seas: the Mediterranean, the Ionian and the Aegean Sea. We know that it's really mountainous. How did that impact the development of Greece during ancient times? Let's find out. This unique geography of rocky mountains, seas and island, it meant there was no unified Greek empire. That meant that Greece wasn't one big country like it is now. The people at the time did not refer to themselves as being Greeks; instead they called themselves Hellenes. And they called the area that they lived in as Hellas. It was the Romans much later on, who gave the name Greece to the region. In this part, what I want you to do, is I want you to use the key keywords, you've got unified, Romans, Hellenes, you've got Greece, mountainous, and Hellas, what you're going to do is you're going to figure out where this words are going to go in those sentences. Once you think you've got it, write those sentences down, and once you've written your sentences down, check them by reading them to yourself. At this point, pause the video, and then have a go. Let's check those sentences. Are you ready? For much of its history, ancient Greece was not a unified empire. It's mountainous terrain made it difficult to unify the country. People referred to themselves as Hellenes, and they referred to the area they lived in as Hellas. It was the Romans which named the area as Greece. And so we got unified there, we got mountainous, we got Hellenes, we got Hellas, we got Romans, and then we have Greece. Make sure that for Hellenes, Hellas, Romans and Greece, you have started those words with capital letters because they are names. Make sure you do that. At this point, I'm going to pause the video so you can check your answer against my own. Awesome job guys. Well done. Let's move on from that. As we learnt earlier, people in ancient Greece, they lived in smaller communities. They lived in smaller cities known as a polis or a city-state. And each city state ruled itself. That means that they had their own governments, their own laws, and even the own army. The city-states were connected by the seas and the ports. And they tended to be located in the valleys between the mountains or on coastal plains. Let's have a look at this one. It's a true or false question. People in ancient Greece lived in city-states. Each one had its own government, laws and army. Is that true or is that false? True or false? Pause the video and complete that task. Let's have a look at the answer to this question. People in ancient Greece lived in city-states. Each one had his own government, laws and army. Is that true or is that false? It is true. Let's find out a little bit more about Greek city-states. The ancient Greek city-states had a lot of different types of government because they all lived independently of each other. And one of the reasons why they were all so independent from each other was because of Greece's geography. Remember, Greece's geography is really mountainous. It made it really difficult for travel, communication and so on. Therefore each Greek city-state developed in their own independent way. Let's find out a bit more about them. What kind of governments did Greek city-states have? There could be monarchies, where kings ruled and they passed their powers onto their heirs. There could be an oligarchy, where an elite few ruled over the people. There could be a tyranny, where one ruler seized powerful strength and force. Or there could also be a democracy, where people were citizens and they could vote to choose their own rulers. Direct democracy, where people voted to choose their own rulers, emerged in the city of Athens, and it lasted for around a hundred years, between 500 and 400 BCE. However, Athenian democracy excluded slaves, it excluded women, and it excluded the poor. Therefore it was mainly men. It's primarily men who could vote. And those men had to have a certain amount of wealth. They could not be poor. They could not be slaves. It wasn't a very democratic system of government. Here I have two questions, which I would love to prompt some really high level thinking from you. Under which type of government would you have liked to lived in if you were back in ancient Greece? And why would you want to live under that type of government? And then my next question, this is a tricky question actually, what do you think is unfair about the different types of government? I think there's something unfair about each of them. There's something unfair about the monarchy. There's something unfair about the oligarchy. There's something unfair about tyranny. And there was something unfair about Athenian democracy. Remember, in Athenian democracy, only men could vote. Women couldn't vote. Poor people couldn't vote. Slaves couldn't vote. So what's unfair about that system? At this point, what I'd like to do, pause the video. If you are with someone next to you, then you can have a discussion with them. If you're working on your own, then I would love you to write your own ideas. And once we come back, I will share my thinking. I just want you to pause the video, and then have a go. Let's have a look. I would love to hear your answers. I would love to read your thinking. Let's have a look. We had the monarchy, where the rule is passed on the powers to their heirs. We had the oligarchy where a neat few ruled over the people. We had the tyranny where one person, one strong ruler was in control. And then we had democracy where people could vote for their representatives; but in Athenian democracy, only if you were a man of a certain amount of wealth. In my thinking, I think all of the systems of government in ancient Greek city-states, they were all unfair. And the monarchies, people didn't have much say in who their rulers were, as power was transferred from the kings to their heirs. There was no system. You couldn't vote for who the King was going to be. Under an oligarchy, only the rich and the powerful had any power. Again, that's not very fair. Under tyranny, again the problem here would be, that all power is held by one single person, who would have got that power through strength and force, and the use of violence. In my opinion, if I had been alive in ancient Greece, I would have wanted to live in a democracy because I would have had some power to choose my rulers. However, if I had been poor, or if I had been a slave, I would not have had any rights. Also remember that women didn't have any voting rights either. The system was not very fair at all. But still I think that type of democracy was still better than the monarchy. It was still better than oligarchy. And it was still better than tyranny. I wonder what you guys made of it. Let's move on. Some of the main city-states in ancient Greece were as follows. Here's a map of some of the key ancient Greek city-states. We've got Athens. And Athens is the most famous of the Greek city-states. Remember, Athens is the current capital of modern Greece. And Athens was the home of democracy where people were allowed to vote for the own rulers. Next one, we have Knossos. So we got Athens here. And then we have Knossos on the Island of Crete. Now Knossos was the oldest city in the whole of ancient Greece. And it was located on the Island of Crete, not on the Greek main island. Knossos was the centre of the Minoan civilization. Next one, we got Olympia. We have Athens, we have Knossos, and we have Olympia here. Now, Olympia was the site of the original Olympic games where all of the different Greek city-states would send athletes to compete. And then lastly, we have Sparta. We had Athens. Athens is here. We had Knossos on the Island of Crete. We had Olympia, and then we had Sparta. Now, why is Sparta famous? Sparta is famous for developing the greatest warriors of all of ancient Greece. Boys in Sparta would leave their families to begin training as soldiers at the age of seven. Imagine being seven, and being trained to be a soldier. That seems very tough. Now let's complete this sentence here. We got a sentence, and we have three key words that you can use. You can use the word Greece, rulers or Athens. Note that Greece and Athens, you got to use capital letters because their proper nouns. They are names of places. At this point, pause the video, and then have a go. Let's have a look and see what the answer is. Ready. Steady. Here's the answer. The city of Athens is viewed as the home of democracy where people voted for the own rulers. It is the capital of Greece today. But remember, the key point to make about Athenian democracy is that even though it was a better system than the other forms of government, like monarchy, oligarchy, and tyranny, it wasn't great. Because you could only vote if you were a man of a certain amount of wealth. You couldn't vote if you were a woman, if you were poor, or if you were a slave. Not great at all. Class, that is the end of your lesson. Great work today. It's now time to complete your end of lesson quiz. If you'd like to do, please ask your parent or carer to share any of your work. And they can do that on Instagram. They can do it on Facebook. They can do it on Twitter. They're going to tag @OakNational, and they're going to use the hashtag learn with Oak. Please ask your parents or carers to share your work for you. Awesome job guys. Well done. I hope you enjoyed our first lesson on this unit on ancient Greece. I'm so excited to be learning about it. You can probably tell by my massive smile and the way I'm talking in a very good way. Thank you so much for all of your hard work today. I hope to see you for our next lesson. Goodbye muffins.

Exit Quiz: How was Ancient Greece organised?

Lesson summary: How was Ancient Greece organised?

In this lesson, we will learn about how Ancient Greece was organised into different city states, each of them with their own set of rules and customs.

History

Y6 History

Key Stage 2

Year 6

In which continent is Greece located in?

Which of these seas surrounds Greece? Tick three.

For much of its history, Ancient Greece was not a unified country. True or false?

History

How was Ancient Greece organised?

Video

How was Ancient Greece organised? - End of Lesson Quiz

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

Q1.In which continent is Greece located in?

Q2.Which of these seas surrounds Greece? Tick three.

Q3.For much of its history, Ancient Greece was not a unified country. True or false?

Q4.Which city-state was the site of the original Olympic Games?

Q5.Which type of government is Athens famous for developing?