Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people have always been centered around the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age. Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt, the Balkans, Cyprus, and Constantinople. Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Constantinople at various periods.

The evolution of Proto-Greek should be considered within the context of an early Paleo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared, for one, by the Armenian language, which also seems to share some other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek; this has led some linguists to propose a hypothetical closer relationship between Greek and Armenian, although evidence remains scant.

Answer the following questions:
1. Where were the Greek people centered?
2. What is the 11th century empire associated with Greeks
3. What is one place where Greeks were distributed?
4. Another?
5. Is America one of these regions?
6. DId these regions coincide with anything?
7. Is Washington a cultural center?
8. What is an example of a Greek cultural center?
9. Any others?
10. Another?
11. Is Columbus one of these cultural centers?
12. Is Constantinople one?
13. Does the Greek language use prothetic vowels?
14. What other language is Greek speculated to be close to?
15. Is there clear and overwhelming evidence of this?
1. around the Aegean and Ionian seas
2. Byzantine Empire
3. Greek peninsula
4. the western coast of Asia Minor
5. No
6. Yes
7. unknown
8. Athens
9. Thessalonica
10. Alexandria
11. No
12. Yes
13. Yes
14. Armenian
15. No