The word "democracy" comes from the Greek words demos (people) and cratos (rule), and means the rule of people as opposed to the rule of one or a few. The Greek origin of this word indicates that this term first appeared in Greece, where the democracy indeed slowly developed at the beginning of the Common Era. One of the big steps on the way to democracy was made in Athens by an archon Solon who introduced his innovative for that era laws in 530 BC. His laws served to solve the conflicts between the ruling class of rich aristocrats and the working class of peasants. Solon equalized these two classes in their freedom by cancelling the debt slavery, giving some power to peasants by establishing Juries Assembly and secured the position of aristocrats by banning dowries. The resulting society was much more democratic than the preexisting one. In this essay I'm going to examine the situation in the Athenian society by the time Solon was appointed as an archon. I'm going to describe three main problems which caused the crisis and the way Solon tried those problems. I'm going to use the book "Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives  by Plutarch, "Athenian Constitution  by Aristotle and the lecture material from the class World History to 1500ce by Trumbach R. as references and sources of the information. One of the most significant changes in the society introduced by Solon was cancelation of the debt slavery, which made peasants equal to aristocrats in their right to freedom. In order to realize the role of the debt slavery in Athens, it's necessary to understand the circumstances of the land division and the relationship between the peasants and aristocrats. All the lands around Athens were divided among the Athenian citizens, however there were two types of land, hills and valleys. The land in the valley was more fertile, and the hill land was stony and had very poor soil. All these lands were distributed unevenly; aristocrats owned bigger shares of fertile lands and peasants got to deal with the hill lands. Therefore most of the peasants had to feed their families of the small patches of land with poor soil. Most likely in the ordinary year their harvest was sufficient only to feed themselves and preserve the seeds for the next year. However it appears that they didn't have a chance to preserve any significant part of the harvest, to sell the food and accumulate some reserve in case of some unpredictable circumstances. Therefore, when these circumstances, such as harvest being destroyed by some natural catastrophe, indeed happened the majority of peasants didn