The so-called colonization of Greater Greece : the exploitation of the Mediterranean world and the Black Sea as economic and communication areas. Beginnings and beginnings.

The colonization of Magna Graecia (second half of the ^8th century/middle of the^5th century BC) was one of the major milestones in Greek history, with a number of large-scale Greek settlements being established on the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts for the first time. These settlements, built by Greeks from the metropolis, the Aegean islands and Asia Minor, ranged from simple trading posts to cities built on an orthogonal plan. As they settled in these new areas, the Greeks were confronted with a variety of native populations, who were strongly influenced by Greek thought and customs, but who also left their mark to varying degrees on the daily lives, contacts and customs of the Greeks who emigrated, but also of the Greeks who remained in the metropolis, Asia Minor and the Aegean. This colonization movement cannot be divorced from developments in the metropolis, where the Mycenaean palatial civilization with its centralized economic model had collapsed in the ^12th century BC. At the same time, according to sources from ancient Egypt, the Near East was under siege from the Sea Peoples and the Hittite kingdom disappeared in Asia Minor. This change most likely had a huge impact on Greece and the Aegean islands. The knowledge of writing disappeared. Researchers have good reason to believe that there was also a marked decline in population and a decentralization of habitats and settlements. Nevertheless, after the disappearance of the Mycenaean palatial civilization, this period was marked in Greece by very different forms of land occupation, which varied greatly from region to region. In some regions, such as Attica, there was continuity between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, beyond the turn of the ^2nd and ^1st millennia BC, whereas in Messinia and other regions, there was considerable discontinuity. The same applies to sacred sites. In this area, research in recent years has clearly demonstrated a real continuity of worship between the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age in sanctuaries located in Kalapodi, whereas in other places of worship located in Olympia, cult activities only began after the turn of the ^2nd to ^1st millennium B.C. It must be understood that all this expresses a locally highly differentiated evolution, which nevertheless served ashumus for the genesis of the polis. This term describes city-states which, thanks to a geography dissected by high mountain ranges, were formed in very diverse locations, supplanting the last Mycenaean palatial civilization of the Bronze Age.