Republic of Cyprus has de jure sovereignty over the entire island, including its

territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, with the exception of the Sovereign
Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, which remain under the UK's control according
to the London and Zürich Agreements. However, the Republic of Cyprus is de facto
partitioned into two main parts: the area under the effective control of the
Republic, located in the south and west and comprising about 59% of the island's
area, and the north,[29] administered by the self-declared Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus, covering about 36% of the island's area. Another nearly 4% of the
island's area is covered by the UN buffer zone. The international community
considers the northern part of the island to be territory of the Republic of Cyprus
occupied by Turkish forces.[h] The occupation is viewed as illegal under
international law and amounting to illegal occupation of EU territory since Cyprus
became a member of the European Union.[35]

Cyprus is a major tourist destination in the Mediterranean

Greek Cypriots (Greek: Ελληνοκύπριοι, Turkish: Kıbrıs Rumları or Kıbrıs Yunanları)
are the ethnic Greek population of Cyprus,[3][4][5][6] forming the island's largest
ethnolinguistic community. According to the 2011 census, 659,115 respondents
recorded their ethnicity as Greek, forming almost 99% of the 667,398 Cypriot
citizens and over 78% of the 840,407 total residents of the area controlled by the
Republic of Cyprus.[1] These figures do not include the 29,321 citizens of Greece
residing in Cyprus, ethnic Greeks recorded as citizens of other countries, or the
population of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.

The majority of Greek Cypriots are members of the Church of Cyprus, an

autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church within the wider communion of Orthodox
Christianity.[5][7] In regard to the 1960 Constitution of Cyprus, the term also
includes Maronites, Armenians, and Catholics of the Latin Church ("Latins"), who
were given the option of being included in either the Greek or Turkish communities
and voted to join the former.

The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans,
dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, in the Greek province of
Macedonia.[21] The Apidima Cave in Mani, in southern Greece, contains the oldest
remains of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa, dated to 210,000 years
ago.[22][23][24] All three stages of the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and
Neolithic) are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave.[25]
Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC,[21] are the
oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route via which
farming spread from the Near East to Europe.[26] Following the end of the Greek
Neolithic period in 3.200 BC, a slow transition period between the stone economy to
the bronze economy during the end of the 4th Millennium BC including Eutresis
culture and Korakou culture with the first large buildings (House of the Tiles)
until the middle of the 3rd Millenium BC took place in the Greek mainland.Tiryns
culture before the Middle Helladic period that developed the socioeconomic base of
the following Minoan civilization and Mycenean civilisation.[27]