Answer: From early times the Greeks lived in independent communities isolated from one another by the landscape. Later these communities were organized into poleis or city-states. The mountains prevented large-scale farming and impelled the Greeks to look beyond their borders to new lands where fertile soil was more abundant.
<span>The answer is Widespread exploration was made possible in the 1400s by the growth in wealth in Europe as well as new technological developments in ship building that made traveling far distances more attainable.</span>