ABSTRACT
The great beauty and diversity of the Greek landscape were seldom fully appreciated by ancient Greeks, to whom these wonders were commonplace, or by modern tourists, who miss the glamorous parts. Greek landscapes are dominated by tectonics. Greece lies near the junction of two of the world's great tectonic plates, where Africa is burrowing under Europe. Over millions of years the forces of collision have generated the dramatic mountain landscapes of Greece, with their cliffs, gorges, and faultscarps, especially around the gulf of Corinth and in Crete. Forests occur mainly in mountains, especially in western Greece; often they occur on fissured limestone with no soil. In drier or more heavily used terrain forest gives way to maquis, land dominated by shrubs, most of which are in fact trees stunted into a shrubby form by browsing, burning, or woodcutting. In Ancient, Byzantine, and Early Modern Greece wild vegetation was not underused land.
