ABSTRACT
The geological setting of the Mediterranean Basin is significant not only because of the range of active processes which it helps to explain, but also in providing the backdrop for human activities in recent millennia. In further chapters, however, we will discuss how human activities have begun to modify this landscape setting to an increasingly marked level. This chapter will concentrate on the active features of the geological landscape and how they fit into the geological history and plate-tectonic setting. From this, we will progress to the sort of surface and submarine topography that these features have generated, and the types of resources they make available to human populations living within these environments. Because of the extent of the recent geological activity, this chapter will also focus on some of the hazards that these processes cause.
