The History of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, and the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.

The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied significantly through the ages, and as a consequence, the history of Greece is similarly elastic in what it includes. Each era has its own related sphere of interest.

The first (proto-) Greek-speaking tribes are generally thought to have arrived in the Greek mainland sometime in the 3rd millennium BC, where various pre-Greek peoples had already been practicing agriculture since the 7th millennium BC.

At its geographical peak, Greek civilization spread from Greece to Egypt and to the Hindu Kush mountains in Pakistan . Since then, Greek minorities have remained in former Greek territories (e.g., Turkey, Italy, and Libya, Levant, etc.), and Greek emigrants have assimilated into differing societies across the globe (e.g., North America, Australia, Northern Europe, South Africa etc.). Still today, most Greeks live in the modern states of Greece (independent since 1821) and Cyprus.