Thematic Essay on Greece and Egypt

Throughout history, geography has affected how areas develop because certain geographic factors cause different patterns of development. Additionally, once developed, those factors either encourage or impede cultural diffusion. Mountains caused the creation of city-states in Greece and hindered cultural diffusion while the location of East Africa led to small Swahili States and encouraged cultural diffusion.

Greece encompasses a peninsula that is covered by mountain ranges. These mountains severely impacted the development of that region. These mountains split up the land, which led to the creation of small city-states. Rather than one unifies empire, the mountains led to the creation of different governments and lord identities. For example, two of the most well known polis are Athena and Sparta. While in Athena, there was a direct democracy with voting and an emphasis on education, Sparta was a strict military based society ruled by an oligarchy. At the same time there was a broad unifying Greek culture in eluding a common language, common mythology, and periodic celebrations like the Olympics. While Greek city-states joined to defeat a huge Persian invasion, later Athena and Sparta greatly weakened Greece by fighting each other in the Peloponnesian War. It is clear that the geographic factor of mountains impacted the development of Greece greatly.

Additionally, the geographic feature hindered cultural diffusion. Ideas spread from one polis to the other but people were very loyal to their own polis and considered these ideas foreign and foreigners as barbarians. But the mountains tension limited the agricultural production of the Greeks so they were very dependent on trade and conquest for the things they could not produce. This spread elements of Greek culture thought the eastern Mediterranean.

Another Geographic factor that affected the development of a certain region location. East Africa’s location impacted how states formed there. The East