How geography shaped the history of Mediterranean Europe
including Ancient Greece and Rome
A major focus of my book series and this Substack column is the geographical foundations of modern progress. In particular, I am interested in geographical factors that enable complex societies to evolve.
By complex societies, I mean:
Agrarian societies (who acquired their food calories from plow-based agriculture)
Commercial societies (who invented progress)
Industrial societies (which most of us live in today)
First of all, let me be clear. Geography does not create human material progress. Geography is a constraint on human material progress, but some regions have greater constraints than others.
The key variable is the extent to which the region enables the first of the Five Keys to Progress: a highly productive food production and distribution system. Without this, no material progress in a region was possible until the Industrial era.
By the Mediterranean region, I mean regions in Europe that are immediately contiguous with the Mediterranean sea.
Much of this post is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can order my e-books and audiobooks at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase full-price ebooks, audiobooks, paperback, or hardcovers on Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
Other articles about how geography has influenced economic development by region:
Why are there such huge variations in income across the globe?
How geography constrained progress (intro to this series)
Mediterranean region (this article)
First, let’s talk about the Mediterranean sea itself. I plan to write a separate article on the topic, so I will only hit the highlights here.
The Mediterranean sea is simply an amazing geographical phenomenon. I mean, look at it! It is an almost 1 million square mile salt-water sea that is almost completely surrounded by land. It is the mother of all inland seas. If not for the Straits of Gibraltar, it would be a lake. Nowhere else on Earth is remotely like it.
The Mediterranean sea is also almost exactly west-east in orientation, so the majority of its coastline is just one biome (more on that later). The sea has an incredibly curved coastline and is also chock full of small and large islands. Compared to the open ocean, the Mediterranean has limited tides, currents, and storms. It would be hard to design a better “Kiddy Pool” for maritime societies. It is not at all a coincidence that the Ancient Greek city/states strongly resembled medieval and modern commercial societies.
Biomes
The single most important factor in whether a region enables complex societies to evolve is its biome. A biome is a category for a geographical area based on its dominant vegetation. The dominant vegetation in any area sets very broad constraints on what type of plants and animals can evolve there. The dominant vegetation sustains the local herbivores, which then sustain the local carnivores. Since humans use a portion of these plants and animals as base materials for food production, biomes play a critical role in constraining the types of human societies that can develop within them.
Plow-based agriculture, a necessary transition step to modern progress, is only possible at a distance from river basins in a few biomes:
Temperate Forest biomes
Mediterranean biomes
(after the invention of the steel plow in 1830s) Temperate Grassland biomes.
The Mediterranean regime is dominated by… (wait for it)… the Mediterranean biome. The Mediterranean biome evolves on the western side of continents between the latitudes of 30 and 40. Its key distinguishing characteristics are rainy winters and a long, hot and dry summer. This rare combination creates a short growing season when temperatures are mild and the soil is moist.
Not surprisingly, given its name, the bulk of the Mediterranean biome is located along the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and the Levant. Smaller and more isolated Mediterranean ecoregions can be found in Chile, California, South Africa, and Australia.
The Mediterranean biome varies between forests, woodlands, savanna, and scrublands depending upon altitude, annual precipitation, recent fires, and historical deforestation. Despite these variations, all sub-regions within the biome share important characteristics.
The Mediterranean biome is for all practical purposes a desert for nine months out of the year. For this reason, most of the plants have evolved to conserve water through the long dry season. Most plants are evergreens with thick leathery leaves, and many of them protect themselves from herbivores with aromatic oils that humans use in cooking Mediterranean cuisine.
While not as conducive to the evolution of complex societies as is the Temperate Forest biome, the Mediterranean biome has supported many civilizations, particularly Ancient Greece, Carthage and Rome. Its primary disadvantage is the lack of an annual leaf fall, so the soil tends to be much less productive. And fewer trees mean that wood is not as plentiful.
Soil
Even with the proper biomes, a region needs fertile soil for agriculture. Because agriculture is key to feeding dense human populations, the type of soil in a region is critical to its ability to support complex societies. Soil is the combination of:
weathered rock,
air,
water, and
organic matter from decomposing plants and animals.
Except for Greece, Mediterranean Europe has large tracts of Inceptisol soil. While not as productive as the soils of Northern Europe, Inceptisols gave the region a solid foundation for productive agriculture
Rivers
Most large and prosperous cities are located on rivers or natural ocean ports. Rivers offer crucial advantages to human development. Rivers:
Offer sources of (hopefully) clean drinking water.
Make it easier to remove human waste.
Offer sources of irrigation for crops.
Deposit additional nutrients in the soil for growing crops.
Enable cost-effective transportation of people and freight.
Offer defensible lines to block the approach of enemy armies.
Because the Mediterranean sea is surrounded by mountains to the north and deserts to the south and east, the region has very few rivers of significance. The ones that exist are small and plunge down steeply from the mountains. Other than the Nile river in Egypt, the Rhone river in France, and the Po river in Northern Italy are almost devoid of major rivers.
Fortunately, the indented coastline and islands created many natural ports that could replace most of the factors that rivers provide in other regions. I plan to write a separate article on this in the future, but for now you see how many areas there are will a significantly curved coastline. Not surprisingly, the Ancient Greeks founded colonies in almost all these areas.
Altitude
Except for Highlands in Tropical latitudes, complex societies are concentrated on the plains at altitudes of 500 meters or lower. While landmass on Earth varies in altitude from just below sea level to 10,000 meters above, about 73.7 percent of humanity inhabits altitudes of less than 500 meters above sea level.
The biggest disadvantage of Mediterranean Europe is that mountains over 500 meters in altitude cover the bulk of the region. While the mountains of Mediterranean Europe are not that high in altitude, they have still played an important role in human history.
With the exception of the Po river valley, there are no major plains along the coastline. Virtually the entire northern coastline is lined with mountains that make farming difficult. In particular, the soils erode quickly after summer fires that denude the landscape followed by winter rains. This meant that most of the agricultural regions hugged the relatively narrow coastal plains, which were also vulnerable to erosion.
Growing Season
Even if a region has a desirable biome, low altitude and agriculturally-productive soil types, other factors can preclude the development of productive agriculture. Even in areas that have all the necessary factors, some days are too hot; some days are too cold; some days have too much rain and other days have too little rain. One or two days of any of the above are not a problem, but if those days are strung together for weeks or months, agricultural production is seriously constrained.
In general, Mediterranean Europe has long growing seasons that vary between 210-240 growing days per year. The biggest exceptions are Anatolia and large sections of Spain. The only Agrarian regions with the same or longer growing seasons were China, Southeast Asia, and the rest of Europe.
Wild ancestors of domesticated animals and plants
Most of the factors that enable productive agriculture are pure geography, but biogeography also plays an important role. Productive agriculture requires domesticated animals and domesticated plants. In particular, a region needs:
Animals that provide a reliable source of protein and fatty acids: cows, pigs, goats, sheep, or chickens.
Animals that are capable of pulling plows: horses, cows, or water buffalo
Staple crops that provide dense sources of carbohydrates, such as rice, wheat, corn, or potatoes.
Before a society can domesticate a plant or animal, the wild ancestors of those plants and animals need to be either:
located in the region or
close enough that human migration can bring those domesticated animals into the region.
Mediterranean Europe had some native wild ancestors of domesticable staple crops, such as barley, grapes, lentils, and olives. The region also had the wild ancestors of goats and cattle. It is unclear whether this would have been enough to support the calorie and nutritional needs of an Agrarian society by itself.
The vast majority of European domesticated plants and animals were introduced from other regions… with one region in particular.
Geographical Isolation
Societies often develop by copying technologies, skills, and social organizations from other societies. And military conquest by other societies can seriously set back long-term development. Because of those two facts, neighboring societies have a major impact on societal development.
The most important such constraint was proximity to the Middle East. As we have seen, agriculture evolved in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Syria, Iraq, and Southern Turkey). Early Agrarian societies in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia played an important role early in the Agrarian era. These regions played a critical role because they had many wild ancestors of domesticated plants and animals.
While the Mediterranean Europe had relatively few wild ancestors of domesticated plants and animals, the region’s proximity to the Middle East and similarities to its climate more than made up for this disadvantage. As Anatolian farmers used up the fertility of their land, they looked abroad for more fertile fields. To the south were deserts and to the north were very different climates, so they migrated east to the Indus valley in modern-day Pakistan and west to Europe.
The shores of the Eastern Mediterranean are effectively transition regions between the Fertile Crescent and the rest of the Mediterranean. Plants and animals that were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent made an easier transition to Mediterranean Europe than any other region.
Some Anatolian migrants hugged the Mediterranean coastline, while others moved up the Danube river valley. Gradually, over thousands of years, they filled in most of the European continent. As they migrated, they brought their genes, culture, technology, crops, domesticated animals, and farming techniques. So in a very real sense, Europe is a colony of Anatolia.
Eventually, this evolved into the Ancient Farming system of Greece and Rome.
The threat of Herding societies
As Peter Turchin has argued (summary here on my online library of book summaries), until the widespread use of firearms and cannons, the horse archers of the Eurasian steppe were the dominant military threat to Agrarian societies. Agrarian societies that were located near Temperate Grassland biomes in Eurasia with horse archers faced an existential threat. Combining rapid strategic and tactical mobility with standoff weapons in the form of the composite bow-and-arrow, the Herding societies of the steppe were dangerous enemies.
The threat from Herding societies varied greatly within the Mediterranean region. The Levant was close enough to the Central Asian steppe, the Iranian highlands, and the Arabian peninsula that it was constantly under threat from Herding societies. Not surprisingly, this region was conquered and ruled by the Persians, Arabs, and Ottomans for long periods of time. The North African coast was vulnerable to conquest from the Berber herding societies.
The European coast of the Mediterranean was significantly less vulnerable to military conquest by Herding societies. With mountainous terrain to the north and the Mediterranean sea to the south, the most significant threat came from the east. The Ancient Greeks and Romans experienced that threat from the Persians, while the Byzantines were constantly at war with the Persians, Arabs, and Ottoman Turks.
This meant that Mediterranean Europe was under the least military threat from Herding societies of all regions that supported Agrarian societies, including the Middle East, India and East Asia. Only Southeast Asia rivaled its relatively low military threat.
Conclusion
Mediterranean Europe had all the geographical conditions necessary to evolve along the Agrarian sequence. Primarily because of the Mediterranean biome, relatively productive soil, navigable bodies of waters, and proximity to the Middle East, Mediterranean Europe evolved complex Agrarian societies. The most famous of these were Ancient Greece, Rome and Carthage.
The proximity to the first region that evolved along the Agrarian sequence – the Middle East – meant that Mediterranean Europe played an outsized role in ancient history. A region that was even more conducive to the evolution of complex Agrarian societies, however, would later eclipse it.
Much of this post is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can order my e-books and audiobooks at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase full-price ebooks, audiobooks, paperback, or hardcovers on Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
Other articles about how geography has influenced economic development by region:
Why are there such huge variations in income across the globe?
How geography constrained progress (intro to this series)
Mediterranean region (this article)
Some other great Substack columns on geography that you should subscribe to: