Visitors to Greece today can behold the ancient architecture, as seen in the skyline of Athens

In this topic, you discovered that archaeologists only began exploring remains of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations in the early 1900s. This is an example of how a place historians believed they knew so much about continues to have lessons to offer. City-states such as these developed independently around lush areas. The poleis had their own identities and governments. You can especially see such differences among cultures when comparing Greece's most powerful city-states, Athens and Sparta. Athens' government evolved from a monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, and finally to a democracy. Sparta was ruled by a small group of citizens in an oligarchy. Unlike Athens, Sparta held a rigid, militaristic, and aggressive social structure. Similarly, in Sparta and Athens, only free adult males were considered citizens, while women, foreigners, and slaves had no political rights.