1. Ancient Greek civilization and geographical factors Marx believes that productivity is the ultimate cause of historical development and geographical environment has an important influence. As an indispensable natural environment for the development of productive forces, it is even decisive in a specific period and region. Plekhanov also believes that the geographical environment has great and even decisive power in the formation of human beings, the manufacture of tools, the types of production, the development speed of productivity and so on. The influence on human social relations and the nature of economic system is indirectly produced through productivity. Let's look at the geographical environment of the birthplace of ancient Greek civilization.

Ancient Greek civilization was born in the Greek Peninsula and Aegean Sea. Its geographical environment is characterized by hilly land, winding coast and dense islands. As far as the interior of Greece is concerned, countless mountains and hills divide Greece into small areas. The extremely inconvenient land transportation and geographical division have caused the situation that Greece is difficult to unify and there are many city-states.

And because the inland land is barren, the food crisis has become an urgent problem for them to solve. As the center of ancient Greek civilization, the central and southern parts of the Greek Peninsula are famous for their numerous harbors and endless straits, which provide natural conditions for Greek civilization to face the sea. Moreover, because the mountains of the Greek Peninsula are interlaced, the rivers are short and swift, and there are no large river basins and vast plains in the east, this geographical polycentricity, which is almost isolated from all parts of the country, determines the polycentricity of the Greek economy. In general,

The birthplace of ancient Greek civilization is close to the Nile valley of ancient Egyptian civilization and the Mesopotamian civilization center of the two rivers valley.

This makes Greek civilization very vulnerable to the positive influence of the above two civilizations. Here, we can see that the superior geographical environment is an important factor affecting the development of civilization. When it comes to the Greek city-state, it is inevitable to mention Athens, the representative of the Greek industrial and commercial city-state. Athens is mountainous and the soil is barren. Only a few small plains and valleys are suitable for growing grain, and agriculture lags behind Sparta and other city-States. This hillside is suitable for growing grapes, olives and other fruit trees. There are a large number of silver mines, high-quality clay and marble needed by Greek architecture in the mountains, which is conducive to the development of handicrafts and commerce by the Athenians on the basis of agriculture. At the same time, Attica Peninsula, where Athens is located, is the frontier connecting China and Greece with the Aegean Sea, which provides favorable conditions for the development of navigation and commerce. In order to solve the food crisis, Athens imported a large number of food crops and other raw materials, and at the same time exported its own handicrafts to various places, which effectively promoted the development of commodity economy in Athens.

Many natural harbors on the Greek Peninsula connected the Greek city-states through the sea, which also became favorable factors for foreign colonization and overseas trade after Greece. At the same time, due to these activities, the economic structure of Greece has changed from a closed agricultural economy to an open commodity economy. These are the basic factors for the prosperity of Greek civilization. Economic development eventually led to the development of the political system. Greece's unique geographical environment has caused what we often call a small country with a small land and a large population. The development of commodity economy has made it possible for Greece to develop a democratic political system.

In terms of Greek culture, the influence of geographical factors is equally far-reaching. Greece is close to the two river basins and the Nile River basin.

It is easy to accept the advanced cultures of the two eastern civilizations and transform them into their own culture, which makes the culture develop rapidly. Of course, the development of Greek culture is inseparable from its own specific natural environment. Taking Athens as an example, a large number of high-quality pottery were produced in primitive times and sold all over the world by taking advantage of the natural advantages of the soil for producing pottery. The development of Greek philosophy and historiography is also inseparable from the influence of the East. Many Greek philosophers and historians have traveled to Egypt, Babylon, India and other eastern countries to learn and absorb its essence. By the 5th century BC, the accumulation and discussion of natural science knowledge about astronomy, geography, mathematics, geometry, physics, medicine, etc., which Greece had learned from the East, had gradually entered the development stage of system theory, and had surpassed the research results of these disciplines in many aspects. Second, the characteristics of ancient Greek civilization

Ancient Greek civilization was open and vast. In the pre-classical period, Greek civilization developed rapidly on the basis of oriental civilization. Facts have proved that various civilizations in the East-Sumerian civilization, Egyptian civilization, Hittite civilization, Babylonian civilization, Hebrew civilization and ancient Indian civilization, etc. -It has made great contributions to ancient Greek civilization, especially Hittite civilization, and played a bridge role between ancient East and ancient Europe. As early as more than 3,000 years ago BC, the so-called Near East, including Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, had established a highly developed and rigorous political and writing system. This cultural circle in the Near East has established close ties with the surrounding areas, not only in politics, military affairs, commerce and technology, but also in language, literature and art. In the post-classical period, the increasingly powerful Greek civilization began to influence the development of Eastern civilization. After the Crusade of Alexander in 334 BC, an empire spanning Europe, Asia and Africa was established, which unified the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia for the first time, thus creating a brilliant Hellenistic era in human history. Alexander Empire almost included most of the major human civilizations at that time-Persian civilization, Egyptian civilization, Jewish civilization and even Indian civilization, with the exception of Confucian civilization. As a result, the traffic of the whole Eurasia was opened. However, in the west at this time, the cultural center has shifted, and the cultural center of the Mediterranean world has moved from Athens in Pericles' time to all parts of the East. We can list four of the most outstanding ones: Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile, Pagama in Asia Minor, Antioch in Syria and Rhode Island. In the following centuries, these places have been the gathering places of uncivilized Europe and Asia.

The Hellenistic era is the opposite of the Orientalization era mentioned above, in which the influence of the East on the West is the main factor, which fully embodies the expansion of ancient Greek civilization. However, the contribution of eastern civilization to western civilization can not be ignored, especially in religious belief and science. Greek civilization also has significant polycentricity. As mentioned above, due to the influence of geographical factors, there was little communication between Greek city-states at that time, and each city-state was developing its own economy and culture. Since the birth of Greek culture, Greece has gone through the Aegean era (also known as the Crete-Mycenae era). About 3000 BC-BC 1200 BC), Homer's era (about 65438 BC+065438 BC+000 BC-800 BC), Antique era (also known as the great colonial era, 8th century BC-6th century BC) and Classical era (5th century BC-4th century BC), civilizations appeared in various regions one after another.

Third, the contribution of ancient Greek civilization to western civilization Politically, the word democracy first appeared in Athens, Greece, and it was also the place where "human rights" first appeared. The democratic political system in Greece, different from the present democracy, is the democracy of the majority, that is, the so-called majority rules the minority, giving democracy to hundreds or thousands of people and depriving tens of thousands of slaves of their political rights. But it is worth mentioning that it advocates equality before the law and freedom of personal life, which are worth learning. Culturally, ancient Greek mythology is a treasure of ancient Greek culture. It is a basic scale formed on the basis of long-term oral communication by primitive Greeks, and has been fully reflected in the works of Homer, hesiod and others. Greek mythology is a huge and complicated system, with many branches and stories, which are not completely consistent. However, it has obvious family color, contains blood ties, and has a basic context, which can be roughly divided into two parts: the story of God and the legend of heroes. At the same time, during the development of Greek culture, many famous works were born. For example, Homer's epic poems (including Iliad and Odyssey) by the blind poet Homer and other participants, hesiod's Oracle poems "Farming" and "Time and Divine Spectrum", Aesop's fables, and Aeschylus' seven works, including the Russian Teia trilogy (Agamemnon, Dionysus and Ode to Dionysus). In terms of philosophy, Greece gave birth to the "three saints of Greece"-Socrates and his student Plato and Plato's student Aristotle. Socrates is known as the founder of Greek philosophy, Plato wrote many philosophical dialogues, while Aristotle's research fields include physics, metaphysics, poetry, biology, zoology, logic, politics, government and ethics, and left relevant works. Many remarkable features of ancient Greek culture also had a great influence on later generations, such as idealism, rationalism and humanism, and had a far-reaching impact on later western civilization. For example, humanism advocated during the Renaissance is humanism born out of Greece. From all the achievements of Greece mentioned above, we can see that Greek culture has played an important role in the development of western civilization and made great contributions to the formation of western civilization. It can be said that although Greek civilization was born after the four ancient civilizations, its importance in ancient civilizations is not uncommon.