The first towns were often built on the hills. The farmers grew food for the city. They mostly grew their crops in the valley and they kept animals on the hills such as sheep and goats.

Sometimes, farmers couldn't grow enough food to feed their own people and the cities sent out some new explorers to look for some new lands across the sea.

The climate of Greece is similar to other Mediterranean countries. In the lowlands, the summers are hot and dry with clear, cloudless skies, and the winters are rainy. In the mountains, it's much cooler, with considerable rain in the summer. Fog and snow are rare in the lowlands, the mountains are snowy in winter. The rainfall varies greatly from area to area. In Thessaly, less than 38 mm of rainfalls in some years, while parts of the western coast receive about 1270 mm. The mean annual temperature in Athens in about 17 degrees C. The extremes range from a low of -0.6 degrees C in January to a normal high of 37.2 degrees C in July.

Conquering some of the new lands showed to the Greeks that they could sell more things to people and buy from them what they needed more easily. The trading system was very good for Greece. The Greeks sold wine, pottery, and olive oil to their trade countries, and that gave them all the money to buy the grains that they needed from Egypt.