Ancient Greece Facts for Kids | Classroom History Learning Video

In this video we are going to learn about Ancient Greece. Ancient Greece! It's going to be so fascinating. You're going to be like, what? I didn't even know that. I didn't even know that. You're going to want to share all the facts you learned with other people and be like, listen, you have no idea how awesome Ancient Greece was. You see, Ancient Greece was a powerful civilization that ruled much of the Mediterranean region and at times even beyond the Mediterranean region. Ancient Greece was so powerful. It is so important to learn about Ancient Greece because they impacted us so much. Even though they ruled the Mediterranean several thousand years ago, what's really cool is they impacted so many aspects of our lives. Even sports, math, art, philosophy, the way we do government, the way we do science, that all goes back to the Ancient Greeks. Now you might be wondering, where in the world was Ancient Greece? Well, we're going to show you on a world map so that you know exactly where in the world we're talking about. Here is the area in the world where Ancient Greece was in a region called the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is actually the name of a sea and the area of the sea where Ancient Greece was, was called the Mediterranean Basin. Actually, it's still called the Mediterranean Basin. In fact, Ancient Greece, the place where that is, that's where modern day Greece is and here is the flag of the country of Greece. Now this is kind of cool. Many historians put the story of Ancient Greece into three time periods. The first time period is the Archaic Period, the second is the Classical Period, and the third is the Hellenistic Period. These are the three time periods of Ancient Greece. Wow, isn't that cool? Archaic Period, Classical Period, and the Hellenistic Period. Okay, so the Archaic Period is the earliest period of Ancient Greece and that's when Ancient Greece really started taking its form and its organization. This period ended with the introduction of the government structure called democracy. Wait, democracy? What is democracy? What does that word mean? We said that the Archaic Period ended once democracy was introduced, but what is democracy? Well, a democracy is a government led by the people, either directly or indirectly through elected officials. It is used all over the world today. In fact, 123 countries in the world use democracy as their form of government and it was born in Ancient Greece. Democracy was born right here in the city-state called Athens. Different city-states in Greece had different forms of government, but Athens had a democracy. So then came the Classical Period, the days of Ancient Greece that most of us think of. We usually think of the Classical Period. That was when the city-states of Athens and Sparta were at their strongest. In Athens, the arts and philosophy were so important. In fact, Socrates and Plato were from Athens and lived in Athens. Athens was a place thriving with culture, the arts, and philosophy. In Sparta, fighting was important. Literally, fighting. They studied war and fighting. They trained the young men when they were boys. Sparta was all about fighting. Sometimes these two city-states would get along and would work together and would even fight against foreign invaders. But there were so many differences between the two societies. The society in Athens and the society in Sparta, they just had very different interests. So they would fight each other in wars called the Peloponnesian Wars. And just look at this picture. Who do you think won these wars? Sparta. But Athens was never finished off. Athens was never completely wiped off the map. And so these two city-states just had a unique relationship where sometimes they worked together and sometimes they would fight. We take this brief learning break to show you Mr. Whiskers in honor of Mrs. Camardello's fourth grade class in New York. Who doesn't like Mr. Whiskers? What? You were expecting me to use the special Mr. Whiskers voice? Well, Mr. Whiskers is sleeping, okay? I'm not going to just talk that way for you. But if he was awake, you know. The classical period of ancient Greece ended with the death of the most famous leader of ancient Greece, whose name was Alexander the Great. He spent much of his childhood in Athens and was trained by the famous philosopher Aristotle. After uniting most of Greece, he stretched the Greek Empire all the way to India to the east and Egypt to the west. Want to know something cool? He never lost one battle. Never lost one battle. Wow. Even though Alexander the Great was a Macedonian prince, he did grow up in Greece and he loved Greek culture and spread the Greek culture around the ancient world. When Alexander the Great died, it started a period of ancient Greece called the Hellenistic period, the final period of ancient Greece. This final period of ancient Greece ended in 146 BC when Rome conquered Greece and made Greece a Roman province. Even if you don't realize it, day by day, things that we do were impacted by ancient Greece. The way we do math and literature, when we study science and philosophy, our forms of government, that's all impacted by this ancient civilization from the Mediterranean.