Second, younger and weaker rocks, the majority of which are of limestone origin, make up western and southern Greece. First, northeastern Greece is occupied by a stable block of ancient (Hercynian) hard rock. Three characteristics of geology and structure underlie these landscape elements. Although it accounts for only about one-fifth of the country’s land area, the lowland has played an important role in the life of the country. With riverine plains and thin, discontinuous strips of coastal plain, these interior valleys and basins constitute the lowland.
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A series of mainland mountain chains running northwest-southeast enclose narrow parallel valleys and numerous small basins that once held lakes. Greece’s mountainous terrain covers some four-fifths of the country, much of which is deeply dissected. The southernmost part of mainland Greece, the Pelopónnisos (ancient Greek: Peloponnese) peninsula, connects to the mainland only by the narrow isthmus at the head of the Gulf of Korinthiakós (Corinth). The rocky headlands and peninsulas extend outward to the sea where there are many island arcs and archipelagoes. The Greek mainland is sharply indented arms and inlets of the sea penetrate so deeply that only a small, wedge-shaped portion of the interior is more than 50 miles (80 km) from the coast. Three elements dominate: the sea, the mountains, and the lowland. The Greek landscape is conspicuous not only for its rugged beauty but also for its complexity and variety. Only to the north and northeast does it have land borders (totaling some 735 miles ), with, from west to east, Albania, the Republic of North Macedonia ( see Researcher’s Note: Macedonia: the provenance of the name), Bulgaria, and Turkey. Greece is bordered to the east by the Aegean Sea, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the west by the Ionian Sea. It lies at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and Africa and is heir to the heritages of Classical Greece, the Byzantine Empire, and nearly four centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.
Greece is a country that is at once European, Balkan, Mediterranean, and Near Eastern. Xeniteia, or sojourning in foreign lands, with its strong overtones of nostalgia for the faraway homeland, has been a central element in the historical experience of the Greek people. The Greeks, like the Jews and the Armenians, traditionally have been a people of diaspora, and several million people of Greek descent live in various parts of the world. The country’s barren landscape historically caused the people to migrate. Attikí (ancient Greek: Attica), the area around the capital, is now home to about one-third of the country’s entire population.Ī Greek legend has it that God distributed soil through a sieve and used the stones that remained to build Greece. The country’s capital is Athens, which expanded rapidly in the second half of the 20th century. Greece has more than 2,000 islands, of which about 170 are inhabited some of the easternmost Aegean islands lie just a few miles off the Turkish coast.
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