What is the origin of the architectural features of ancient Greek temples?

Greece belongs to the Mediterranean climate zone, with abundant sunshine, dry air and pleasant climate. But Greece is surrounded by the sea on three sides, and a large area of land is located in hilly areas, lacking natural resources and fertile land. The ancient Greeks can only meet their basic needs through exchange. Based on such natural conditions, handicrafts and commerce in ancient Greece were very developed, and overseas trade began very early, thus the ancient Greek civilization born was extroverted and free.

In Greece, there is no extreme weather and it is natural and quiet. People can develop freely here without being restricted by the harsh environment, so they don't need religion as spiritual sustenance to shape social cohesion. Therefore, the ancient Greek civilization was not dominated by religion, and the world outlook of the ancient Greeks was secular and people-oriented.

But the ancient Greek civilization is, after all, the early civilization of mankind. It can't get rid of the shackles of backward productive forces and relations of production, and still retains the most primitive view of nature, so myths appeared and temples were born. The uniqueness of ancient Greek civilization is that while other civilizations are seeking to interpret the world in a religious way, ancient Greece is creating a human-centered world.

Such conditions determined that ancient Greece believed in polytheism, which was symbolized by polytheism, and with the enhancement of humanistic consciousness, this belief gradually developed into the worship of heroes and patrons. Therefore, the temple buildings in ancient Greece naturally do not have the mysterious characteristics of temples in other early human civilizations (such as ancient Egypt). The temples in ancient Greece were open and clear.

Greece is warm, sunny and low in humidity. Bright sunshine can dispel secrecy and ambiguity, make everything easy to identify and understand, and the outline of objects can be clearly seen. In such a transparent world, the sense of volume of objects is very obvious and the projection is very clear. In this environment, the ancient Greeks formed a unique architectural aesthetics: they paid attention to the combination of blocks to highlight the sense of volume of the building, and formed the change of light and shadow through the use of gray space. Temple architecture also follows these technologies.

The humanistic worldview of ancient Greece holds that the human body is the most beautiful thing, and this artistic pursuit is one of the important characteristics that distinguish ancient Greece from other civilizations. The proportion of human body has a far-reaching influence on the modeling of ancient Greek architecture, especially the ancient Greek columns, which the architect Vitruwei once compared to the human body. The healthy, lively and energetic aesthetic feeling urges the ancient Greek temple architecture to pursue balance and coordination.

The aesthetic concept of ancient Greece was also influenced by the original developed natural science and rational thinking, and the logic of numbers became the standard to determine the proportion and scale of buildings. The philosopher Pythagoras believed that "number is the essence of all things", Plato wrote at the gate of his own college that "those who don't know geometry can't enter", and Aristotle also advocated that "beauty is composed of measurement and order". The embodiment of this aesthetic view in ancient Greek temple architecture is its precise size and rigorous composition.