census, Greece's population is around 11 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, its urban area also including Piraeus. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa[13][14][15] and has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, and Bulgaria to the north and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft). Modern Greece traces its roots to the civilization of Ancient Greece, generally considered the cradle of Western civilization. As such, it is the birthplace of democracy,[16] Western philosophy,[17] the Olympic Games, Western literature and historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, and Western drama,[18] including both tragedy and comedy. This legacy is partly reflected in the 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites located in Greece, ranking it 7th in Europe and 13th in the world. Greek language, culture, and identity emerged early in human history, having endured centuries of significant political and social change, including foreign domination. The modern Greek state, which encompasses much of the historical core of Greek civilization, was established in 1830, following the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. Greece is a founding member of the United Nations, has been a member of what is now the European Union since 1981, joined the eurozone in 2001,[19] and has been a member of NATO since 1952.[a] Greece is a developed country with an advanced,[20][21] high-income economy[22] and with very high standard of living, including the world's 21st highest quality of life as of 2010.[23][24][25] Greece's economy is also the largest in the Balkans, where Greece is an important regional investor. Contents [hide] 1 Name 2 History 2.1 From the earliest settlements to the 3rd century B.C. 2.2 Hellenistic and Roman periods 2.3 Medieval period 2.4 Ottoman period 2.5 The War of Independence 2.6 The 19th century 2.7 The 20th century and beyond 3 Geography and climate 4 Politics 4.1 Political parties 4.2 Administrative divisions 4.3 Foreign relations 5 Military 6 Economy 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Eurozone entry 6.3 Debt crisis (2010–) 6.4 Maritime industry 6.5 Tourism 6.6 Transport 6.7 Telecommunications 6.8 Science and technology 7 Demographics 7.1 Cities 7.2 Migration 7.3 Religion 7.4 Languages 7.5 Education 7.6 Health 8 Culture 8.1 Philosophy 8.2 Literature 8.3 Cinema 8.4 Cuisine 8.5 Music 8.6 Sports 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 11.1 Bibliography 12 External links 12.1 Government 12.2 General information Name Main article: Name of Greece The names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages ς name is the Hellenic Republic, in English it is referred to as Greece, which comes from the Latin term Graecia as used by the Romans, which literally means 'the land of the Greeks', and derives from the Γ ός w v w History Main article: History of Greece From the earliest settlements to the 3rd century B.C. Main article: Ancient Greece A map showing the Greek territories and colonies during the Archaic period. The earliest evidence of human presence in the Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, in the northern Greek province of Macedonia.[26] Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC,[26] are the oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route via which farming spread from the Near East to Europe.[27] Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is considered the birthplace of Western civilization,[28][29][30][31][32] beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea at around 3200 BC,[33] the Minoan civilization in Crete (2700–1500 BC),[32][34] and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland (1900–1100 BC).[34] These civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Myceneans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Myceneans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, during a time of regional upheaval known as the Bronze Age collapse.[35] This ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is a symbol of classical Greece. Detail of the Alexander Mosaic, depicting Alexander the Great on his horse Bucephalus. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games.[36] The Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 8th or 7th centuries BC.[37][38] With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, Southern Italy (Latin: Magna Graecia, or Greater Greece) and Asia Minor. These states and their colonies reached great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science, mathematics and philosophy. In 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.[39][40] By 500 BC, the Persian Empire controlled territories ranging from what is now northern Greece and Turkey all the way to Iran, and posed a threat to the Greek states. Attempts by the Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule failed, and Persia invaded the states of mainland Greece in 492 BC, but was forced to withdraw after a defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. A second invasion followed in 480 BC. Despite a heroic resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks, Persian forces sacked Athens. Following successive Greek victories in 480 and 479 BC at Salamis, Plataea and Mycale, the Persians were forced to withdraw for a second time. The military conflicts, known as the Greco-Persian Wars, were led mostly by Athens and Sparta. However, the fact that Greece was not a unified country meant that conflict between the Greek states was common. The most devastating intra- Greek war in classical antiquity was the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which marked the demise of the Athenian Empire as the leading power in ancient Greece. Both Athens and Sparta were later overshadowed by Thebes and eventually Macedon, with the latter uniting the Greek world in the League of Corinth (also known as the Hellenic League or Greek League) under the guidance of Phillip II, who was elected leader of the first unified Greek state in history. Following the assassination of Phillip II, his son Alexander III ("The Great") assumed the leadership of the League of Corinth and launched an invasion of the Persian Empire with the combined forces of all Greek states in 334 BC. Following Greek victories in the battles of Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela, the Greeks marched on Susa and Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of Persia, in 330 BC. The Empire created by Alexander the Great stretched from Greece in the west and Pakistan in the east, and Egypt in the south. Before his sudden death in 323 BC, Alexander was also planning an invasion of Arabia. His death marked the collapse of the vast empire, which was split into several kingdoms, the most famous of which were the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt. Other states founded by Greeks include the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Greco-Indian Kingdom in India. Although the political unity of Alexander's empire could not be maintained, it brought about the dominance of Hellenistic civilization and the Greek language in the territories conquered by Alexander for at least two centuries, and, in the case of parts the Eastern Mediterranean, considerably longer.[41] Hellenistic and Roman periods Main articles: Hellenistic Greece and Roman Greece See also: Roman Empire The Antikythera mechanism After a period of confusion following Alexander's death, the Antigonid dynasty, descended from one of Alexander's generals, established its control over Macedon by 276 B.C., as well as hegemony over most of the Greek city-states.[42] From about 200 BC the Roman Republic became increasingly involved in Greek affairs and engaged in a series of wars with Macedon.[43] Macedon's defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 signaled the end of Antigonid power in Greece.[44] In 146 B.C. Macedonia was annexed as a province by Rome, and the rest of Greece became a Roman protectorate.[43][45] The process was completed in 27 B.C. when the Roman Emperor Augustus annexed the rest of Greece and constituted it as the senatorial province of Achaea.[45] Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace's famous statement: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive").[46] Greek science, technology and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period.[47] Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenized East were instrumental in the spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries,[48] and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably St Paul) were generally Greek-speaking,[49] though none were from Greece.