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Do not fill this in! === Prehistory and early history === {{Main|Neolithic Greece|Pelasgians|Cycladic culture|Minoan civilization|Mycenaean Greece}} [[File:Entrance to the treasure of Atreus.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|The entrance of the [[Treasury of Atreus]] (13th century BC) in [[Mycenae]]]] The [[Apidima Cave]] in [[Mani Peninsula|Mani]], in southern Greece, has been suggested to contain the oldest remains of [[early modern humans]] outside of Africa, dated to 200,000 years ago.<ref name="NAT-20190710">{{cite journal |last=Harvati |first=Katerina |display-authors=et al. |title=Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia |date=10 July 2019 |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |volume=571 |issue=7766 |pages=500–504 |doi=10.1038/s41586-019-1376-z |pmid=31292546 |s2cid=195873640 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/6646855 }}</ref> However others suggest the remains represent [[archaic humans]].<ref name=":5">Marie-Antoinette de Lumley, Gaspard Guipert, Henry de Lumley, Natassa Protopapa, Théodoros Pitsios, Apidima 1 and Apidima 2: Two anteneandertal skulls in the Peloponnese, Greece, L'Anthropologie, Volume 124, Issue 1, 2020, 102743, ISSN 0003-5521, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anthro.2019.102743.</ref> All three stages of the Stone Age ([[Paleolithic]], [[Mesolithic]], and [[Neolithic]]) are represented in Greece, for example in the [[Franchthi Cave]].<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Douka | first1 = K. | last2 = Perles | first2 = C. | last3 = Valladas | first3 = H. | last4 = Vanhaeren | first4 = M. | last5 = Hedges | first5 = R.E.M. | title = Franchthi Cave revisited: the age of the Aurignacian in south-eastern Europe | page = 1133 | url = https://www.academia.edu/1129937 | journal = Antiquity Magazine | year = 2011}}</ref> [[Neolithic]] settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC,<ref name="Borza">{{cite book|author=Eugene N. Borza|title=In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=614pd07OtfQC&pg=PA58|year=1992|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-00880-6|page=58}}</ref> are the oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route by which farming spread from the [[Near East]] to Europe.<ref>{{cite book | last = Perlès | first = Catherine | title = The Early Neolithic in Greece: The First Farming Communities in Europe | page = 1 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=LQQ3tx5_t7QC&q=sesklo | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2001| isbn = 9780521000277 }}</ref> Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and considered the birthplace of Western civilisation,<ref name="Duchesne2011">{{cite book|author=Ricardo Duchesne|title=The Uniqueness of Western Civilization|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pWmDPzPo0XAC&pg=PA297|date=7 February 2011|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-19248-5|page=297|quote=The list of books which have celebrated Greece as the "cradle" of the West is endless; two more examples are Charles Freeman's The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World (1999) and Bruce Thornton's Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (2000)|author-link=Ricardo Duchesne}}</ref><ref name="BotticiChalland2013">{{cite book|author1=Chiara Bottici|author2=Benoît Challand|title=The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QW1lrPMXprwC&pg=PA88|date=11 January 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-95119-0|page=88|quote=The reason why even such a sophisticated historian as Pagden can do it is that the idea that Greece is the cradle of civilisation is so much rooted in western minds and school curricula as to be taken for granted.}}</ref> beginning with the [[Cycladic civilization]] on the islands of the [[Aegean Sea]] around 3200 BC,<ref>{{Cite book | last = Sansone | first = David | title = Ancient Greek civilization | page = 5 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=YJONdN0dNYQC&q=cycladic%20civilization&pg=PT27 | publisher = Wiley | year = 2011| isbn = 9781444358773 }}</ref> the [[Minoan civilization]] in Crete (2700–1500 BC),<ref name="Frucht2004">{{cite book| first = Richard C | last = Frucht|title=Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=lVBB1a0rC70C&pg=PA847 |access-date=5 December 2012|date=31 December 2004 | publisher =ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-800-6|page= 847|quote= People appear to have first entered Greece as hunter-gatherers from southwest Asia about 50,000 years... of Bronze Age culture and technology laid the foundations for the rise of Europe's first civilization, Minoan Crete}}</ref><ref name="World and Its Peoples">{{cite book| title= World and Its Peoples| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b5vHRWp8yqEC&pg=PA1458|access-date=5 December 2012|date=September 2009|publisher=Marshall Cavendish|isbn=978-0-7614-7902-4|page= 1458|quote=Greece was home to the earliest European civilizations, the Minoan civilization of Crete, which developed around 2000 BC, and the Mycenaean civilization on the Greek mainland, which emerged about 400 years later. The ancient Minoan}}</ref> and then the [[Mycenaean Greece|Mycenaean]] civilization on the mainland (1600–1100 BC).<ref name="World and Its Peoples" /> These civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans using an [[Undeciphered writing systems|undeciphered script]] known as [[Linear A]], and the Mycenaeans writing the earliest [[Attested language|attested]] form of [[Greek language|Greek]] in [[Linear B]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Drews | first = Robert |author-link=Robert Drews | title = The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 BC | page = 3 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=bFpK6aXEWN8C&q=greece%20bronze%20age%20collapse | publisher = Princeton University Press | year = 1995| isbn = 0691025916 }}</ref> Contemporary [[Hittites|Hittite]] and Egyptian records suggest the presence of a single state under a "Great King" based in mainland Greece.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Beckman|first1=Gary M.|last2=Bryce|first2=Trevor R.|last3=Cline|first3=Eric H.|title=Writings from the Ancient World: The Ahhiyawa Texts|journal=Writings from the Ancient World|year=2012|location=Atlanta|publisher=Society of Biblical Literature|url=http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/061528P.front.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150409120519/http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/061528P.front.pdf |archive-date=9 April 2015 |url-status=live|issn=1570-7008|page=6}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Kelder|first1=Jorrit M.|title=The Kingdom of Mycenae: A Great Kingdom in the Late Bronze Age Aegean|journal=CDL Press|url=https://www.academia.edu/218696|year=2010|location=Bethesda, MD|access-date=18 March 2015|pages=45, 86, 108}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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