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Greek culture has affected and altered ways of life in many countries. The way it has affected our culture, besides government, is through  architecture. If you go to a Greek city you will always encounter columns and huge temples that honor the gods. The architecture that we will be focusing on today is the Parthenon. The Parthenon was built during the Doric age of the column. They were a dull column that didn't have any designs on it. The ionic age is where you start to see some patterns on the columns, but not extensive patterns. Then,after the ionic age, came the Corinthian age where they // finally // put designs on columns that covered most of the column or just the top and bottom.

Most columns in America are Doric in design; like the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial has 36 Doric columns that support the monument, each of which represent the 36 states during Lincoln's presidency. This is one way in which the Greek culture has affected the American culture and that is the reason why we build our monuments the way we do. The two cultures both have built buildings to honor important figures of their culture. We built the Lincoln Memorial to honor Abraham Lincoln and the Greeks built the Parthenon to honor/worship Athena. Almost every monument in America has columns, specifically the ones in Washington D.C. Because you see more important people in a capital city.

Now, you may be asking, “Why do we have so many Greek influenced buildings?”. Well, that dates back to when Alexander the Great ruled all of the known world. As his army spread, so did the Greek culture and architecture. After the Roman Empire collapsed (this is after the death of Alexander the Great) the ruins of their massive temples and other assortments of building types to honor their important icons of society were found a few years after. They then copied the ancient Greek ruins and you see Greek architecture and columns popping up all over Europe and Russia. Thus, when they started colonizing the Americas, they took the architecture with them. If you ever go to New York and other New England states, you will find many building with the columns from any Greek time period. Sometimes you don't even have to go to New York to see Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian columns, you just have to look around in your neighborhood or town.