Aegean Sea

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea (Aigaio Pelagos, Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
: Ege Denizi ) is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea or Ocean off the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia....
located between the southern Balkan

Balkans

The Balkans is the historical name of a geographic subregion of southeastern Europe. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains, which run through the centre of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia....
and Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
n peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of Landform that is nearly surrounded by water but connected to mainland via an isthmus. Word origin: Latin paeninsula : paene, almost + insula, island....
s, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece

Greece

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
respectively.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Aegean Sea'

Start a new discussion about 'Aegean Sea'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The Aegean Sea (Aigaio Pelagos, Turkish

Turkish language

Mediterranean Sea

Balkans

Anatolia

Peninsula

Greece

Turkey

Black Sea

Dardanelles

.The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara....
and Bosporus

Bosporus

The Bosporus or Bosphorus , also known as the Istanbul Strait , is a strait that forms the boundary between the European part of Turkey and its Asian part ....
. The Aegean Islands

Aegean Islands

The Aegean Islands are a group of islands in the Aegean Sea, with mainland Greece to the west and north and Turkey to the east; the island of Crete delimits the sea to the south....
are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
and Rhodes

Rhodes

Rhodes is a Greece List of islands of Greece approximately southwest of Turkey in eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007 of which 53,709 resided in the Rhodes capital city of the island....
. The Aegean Region consists of nine provinces in southwestern Turkey, in part bordering on the Aegean sea.

The sea was traditionally known as Archipelago
Archipelago

An archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands that are formed tectonically. The word archipelago literally means "chief sea", from Italian language arcipelago , derived ultimately from Greek language arkhon and pelagos ....
(in Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
, ????p??a???), the general sense of which has since changed to refer to the Aegean Islands and, generally, to any island group because the Aegean Sea is remarkable for its large number of islands.

Etymology

In ancient times there were various explanations for the name Aegean. It was said to have been named after the Greek town of Aegae, or after Aegea

Aegea

Aegea is a back-formation from "Aegean Sea", the sea that was named for an eponymous Aegeus in early levels of Greek mythology. The Encyclopaedia Britannica mentioned an Aegea, queen of the Amazons, as an alternative eponym of the Aegean Sea, and Aegea was the name of the wife of the Roman proconsul of Achaia whom the apostle Andre...
, a queen of the Amazons

Amazons

The Amazons , ) are a nation of all-female warriors in Classical and Greek mythology, who were possibly historical. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatians....
who died in the sea, or Aigaion, the "sea goat", another name of Briareus, one of the archaic Hecatonchires

Hecatonchires

The Hecatonchires, or Hekatonkheires, were three gargantuan figures of an archaic stage of Greek mythology. According to Hesiod they were children of Gaia and Uranus , simply the issue of Earth and Sky, or of Earth and Sea thus part of the very beginning of things in the submerged prehistory of Greek myth, though they played no part...
, or, especially among the Athenians, Aegeus

Aegeus

In Greek mythology, Aegeus , also Aigeus, Aegeas or Aigeas, was an archaic figure in the founding myth of Athens. The "goat-man" who gave his name to the Aegean Sea was, next to Poseidon, the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian institutions and one of the kings of Athens....
, the father of Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra , and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night....
, who drowned himself in the sea when he thought his son had died.

A possible etymology is a derivation from the Greek word – aiges = "waves" (Hesychius

Hesychius of Alexandria

Hesychius of Alexandria , a grammarian who flourished probably in the 5th century CE, compiled the richest lexicon of unusual and obscure Greek words that has survived ....
of Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
; metaphorical use of (aix) "goat"), hence "wavy sea", cf. also (aigialos) "coast".

In the Bulgarian language

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European languages, a member of the Slavic languages linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except Macedonian language, such as the elimination of grammatical case, the development of a suffixed definite article , the lack of a verb infin...
the sea is also known as White sea (???? ????), as opposed to Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is an inland sea sea bounded by southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Anatolia and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Seas and various straits....
( ????? ????). This usage derives from the Turkish Ak Deniz (White Sea) and Kara Deniz (Black Sea), which in turn reflects the early Turkish use of the epithets White and Black for South and North.

History

The current coastline dates back to about 4000 BC. Before that time, at the peak of the last ice age (c. 16,000 BC) sea levels everywhere were 130 metres lower, and there were large well-watered coastal plains instead of much of the northern Aegean. When they were first occupied, the present-day islands including Milos

Milos

Milos , formerly known as ????? – Melos, and before the Athens massacre and recolonization in 416 BC as ????? – Malos, is a volcanic Greece island in the Sea of Crete, just south of the Aegean Sea....
with its important obsidian

Obsidian

Obsidian is a naturally occurring glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock. It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools without crystal growth....
production were probably still connected to the mainland. The present coastal arrangement appeared c. 7000 BC, with post-ice age sea levels continuing to rise for another 3000 years after that.

The subsequent Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is, with respect to a given prehistory, the period in that society when the most advanced metalworking included smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring outcroppings of copper and tin ores, creating a bronze alloy by melting those metals together, and casting them into bronze artifact s....
civilizations of Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
and the Aegean Sea have given rise to the general term Aegean civilization
Aegean civilization

Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and the Aegean Sea. There are in fact three distinct but communicating and interacting geographic regions covered by this term: Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland....
. In ancient times the sea was the birthplace of two ancient civilizations the Minoans

Minoan civilization

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization which arose on the island of Crete. The Minoan culture flourished from approximately 27th century BC to 1450 BC; afterwards, Mycenaean Greece culture became dominant at Minoan sites in Crete....
of Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
and the Mycenean

Mycenaean Greece

Mycenaean Greece is a cultural period of ancient Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece....
Civilization of the Peloponnese

Peloponnese

The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus is a large peninsula and Regions of Greece in southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth....
.

Later arose the city-states of Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
and Sparta

Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
among many others that constituted the Athenian Empire and Hellenic Civilization. Plato described the Greeks living round the Aegean "like frogs around a pond". The Aegean Sea was later invaded by the Persians

Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
and the Romans

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
, the Venetians

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
, the Seljuk Turks, and the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
. The Aegean was the site of the original democracies

Democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek language d?????at?a , "popular government" which was coined from d???? , "people" and ???t?? , "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political syst...
, and its seaways were the means of contact among several diverse civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Economical and Political Setting

Many of the islands in the Aegean have safe harbours and bays, but navigation through the sea was easier in ancient times than traveling across the rough terrain of the mainland of Greece (and to some extent the coastal areas of Anatolia). Many of the islands are volcanic

Volcano

A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or Crust , which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface....
, and marble

Marble

Marble is a nonfoliated metamorphic rock resulting from the metamorphism of limestone, composed mostly of calcite . It is extensively used for Marble sculpture, as a architecture material, and in many other applications....
and iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. Iron is a Group 8 element and period 4 element. Iron is lustrous and silvery in color....
are mined on other islands. The larger islands have some fertile valleys and plains. In the Aegean Sea there are two islands belonging to Turkey

Turkey

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, ???ed??
Tenedos

Tenedos, officially referred to as Bozcaada in Turkey is a small island in the Aegean Sea, part of the Bozcaada Districts of Turkey of ?anakkale Province Provinces of Turkey in Turkey....
) and Gökçeada (in Greek, ?µß???
Imbros

Imbros, officially referred to as G?k?eada in Turkey , is the largest island of Turkey, part of ?anakkale Province. It is located at the entrance of Saros Bay in the northern Aegean Sea, also the westernmost point of Turkey ....
), while the rest belonging to Greece

Greece

Aegean Sea

Etymology

History

Economical and Political Setting

Physiographic Setting