In the essay "The Life Cycle In Archaic Greece" by Deborah Kamen (The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece), did you find the essay to be informative?

In her essay, Kamen uses the term "Archaic Greece" to limit her discussion broadly to the swath of time between 800 B.C. and 480 B.C., beginning with the birth of its politics and ending when Greece was transformed forever by the second Persian invasion.

Around 800 B.C., Archaic Greece began with a population explosion that coincided with its development of a political basis, which scholars term Greece's Structural Revolution. Kamen dives into what it means for Greece to have instituted a political organization, arguing that it was born out of the creation of the poleis: a series of Greek city-states which held significant local autonomy, with basically no higher power to defer to. The second key revolution that characterizes Archaic Greece was its Intellectual Revolution, in which Classical thoughts and methods began to emerge.

Kamen breaks down how Classical thought deeply informed each original line of thinking that we now collectively term "the humanities." She expounds on the creation of the Greek alphabet; the first Greek literature; the construction of the ideals of Greek democracy. Lastly, she touches on how different areas in Greece developed unique ideas, beginning an exchange of ideas that created constructive debate that extends into modernity.