For many people, history is a boring topic. They would rather enter a sweepstake for winning a car or watch some TV. But did you know that many of the things we take for granted today, like TV dramas or indoor plumbing, can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks? You probably already know some of the most famous names from Ancient Greece already. This article will give you more about their background and the amazing things they did that we still build on to this day. Chances are, if you have ever used hydro excavation equipment or a American Carriage horse drawn buggy - you can thank a Greek.

Archimedes

Archimedes was an ancient Greek mathematician, inventor, and astronomer who lived from 287 to 212 BC. It was Archimedes who discovered how things float on water, how to make water flow uphill, and who figured out how levers work. Levers are still used in everything from machines to the light switches. Many key concepts in mathematics, such as how to calculate the area under a parabola and how to figure out the volume of a shape that's irregular, such as a crown or a rock.

Aristotle

Aristotle was an ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher who lived from 384 to 322 BC. Many of our views today in the West, ranging from morality to what make a piece of large canvas art beautiful we owe to Aristotle. He studied many types of plants and animals and made observations that hold up even today and began the classification system that we would eventually use to catalog all life on earth. Aristotle also worked out the water cycle, wrote hundreds of treatises, and taught Alexander the Great, who would go on to conquer half of the world.

Plato

Plato is the Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician who taught Aristotle. He lived from 424 to 348 BC and he founded the first university in the West. Plato placed heavy emphasis on instinct and intuition and encouraged people to doubt reality, which you may find familiar after watching The Matrix for your architecture training. Plato also wrote about the purpose and ideals of government, which heavily influenced the formation of modern republics, like the democratic governments of France and the United States of America.

Homer

Homer was a blind poet from Ancient Greece who lived sometime during the 8th century. Homer wrote two of the most famous books of all time, the Iliad and The Odyssey, which chronicle the siege of Troy and the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts respectively. Even a dentist who has never read either book had benefited from Homer's work, because his ideas about narrative, plot structure, and a single unified theme have become the basis for today's novels, screenplays, and TV shows.

Learn even more about famous Greek people in history here. Feel free to also pay a visit to one of our website sponsors: Cannect - specialist mortgage broker in Toronto