The Hasting's Cuttoff was an alternative road for westward travel for the immigrants who were making their way towards the California. The reason James reed and George Donner took this alternative route was because it was a shorter way.
Their decision was definitively unwise as the the trail, before their journey, was not tested and thus the undertaking was severely dangerous. Unfortunately their party got trapped by heave snowfall as many of the survivors had to resort to eating to dead in order to survive.
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Answer:
The mountains isolated Greeks from one another, which caused Greek communities to develop their own way of life. Greece is made up of many mountains, isolated valleys, and small islands. This geography prevented the Greeks from building a large empire like that of Egypt or Mesopotamia