Beyond Greece and Rome
aeon.co
aeon.co
It is especially when a certain perceived problematic attitude is the focus, without much actual teaching the wider history, that leaves me feeling disappointed. I think teaching the complete history is a far better antidote than emphasizing a bad trend. Like I’ve read many articles accusing the brothers Grimm of being masculinist, but rarely will those same articles attempt to educate the reader of the Baroness D’Aulnoy, who coined the very term fairy tale!
The ancient world was indeed complicated and interconnected, rich in so many cultures and peoples and stories. We should talk more about these other civilizations! The Phoenicians, the Celts, the Chaldeans, Akkadians, Seleucids, Numidians—-those are just a few from “the West”, around the world offers an even broader view. There is so much more to wonder at, it is a shame that the discourse has the toxic backdrop it does.
This is perhaps the least controversial statement in history. It's obviously true. Western Civilization is:
1) Greece
2) Rome, borrowing from the Greeks
3) Christianity taking over Rome
4) Germanic tribes adopting Roman law + the Christian religion
5) Protestantism
6) The Renaissance
7) The Enlightenment
You can read Plato, and it all makes sense to you, but a lot of contemporaneous Asian sources would be quite alien. Its a weird kind of ethnocentrism to deny such a thing exists, because it leads to thinking that western civilization is in fact universal.
Agree with your general points. It is hard to know the boundaries of your culture if you've never been intimate with another, as in really getting to know the memes and patterns of thought that make up cultures outside of your own.
whoa, that's news to me. can you elaborate?
Also, glorifying reason has become very unpopular in a cultural context increasingly built around fairy tales (from Lord of the Rings to superheroes).
And of course, the neo-racist movements see egalité as a terrible, terrible thing.
>European historians traditionally dated its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.
The French Revolution is deeply grounded in Enlightenment principles.
And from Wikipedia[2], "The Dark Enlightenment, also called the Neo-Reactionary movement (abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and reactionary philosophical and political movement. It can be understood as a reaction against values and ideologies associated with Enlightenment, advocating for a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government, such as absolute monarchism and cameralism."
United States Vice-President J.D. Vance reached political prominence largely via the support of prominent anti-Enlightenment conservative Rod Dreher. [3]
1. https://archive.is/9AFzR#selection-439.0-439.52
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment#Influence_i...
Similarly, the Greeks are thought to have borrowed more than a little from Ancient Egypt and other neighboring civilizations.
There are many others that don't have that prefix but are nonetheless derived from Arabic like zero, cipher, azimuth, nadir, zenith and many others.
Our numerals are "Arabic numerals" because we got them from Arabic.
European science barely existed until Europeans started reading Arabic writings and ancient writings that were preserved in Arab libraries.
One invaded what became a major power, stayed there for centuries, and up to nearly a third of a second one, staying there for decades.
The others are on the other side of an ocean.
There’s a reason we study it in junior high school, at least in some Western European countries.
All of which is to say, a huge portion of the old world can claim "western civilization" as an inheritance, unless we narrowly define "western civilization" as being rooted sometime in the past millennia (and then ignore the the effect of European colonialism in bringing many other areas into the fold, some for the second time). And that's before delving into pre-history and the influence of Central Asian steppe culture, from which we get Western civilization's shared Indo-European linguistic and, arguably, even religious history (see, e.g., links between Judeo-Christian and Dharmic religions via Zoroastrianism).
Which isn't to say modern European culture has the same relationship as everywhere else touched by Mediterranean culture, or that Renaissance and Enlightenment ideals aren't important, pivotal contributions to modern "western" culture. History has attenuated, obscured, and partially erased the historical interconnectedness. But relative to, e.g., East Asian or Mesomerican culture, there's a strong argument that everybody from the Hindu Kush to Portugal, from Ethiopia to Moscow, have a deeply shared cultural history and inheritance and are rightly called "Western" in a meaningful sense.
I don't object to the existence of a western civilization, I just object to Europeans claiming it as a unique, or even uniquely formative, inheritance. When I read about Hindu nationalist claims to a third emergence of writing in the Old World, it seems they're so passionate only because there's the tacit belief that they don't have the same stake in western civilization as Europeans; that they're not otherwise equal heirs to a rich western culture. But they are, IMO.
Modern Mongolians share far more cultural similarities with the Hunnic and Turkic 'barbarians' that 'western civilizations' warred with. Many Mongolians still live nomadically! By contrast, modern Europeans long since abandoned their own traditional lifestyles which were practiced at the time - largely due to their colonization by and integration into the Roman empire. Russian identity has many western origins but their connection with Rome/Greece during antiquity are far thinner. Islam did not exist during that time either - so despite shared ancestor cultures, the Islamic empire emerged outside of the collapsing Roman empire and in direct competition to it.
Besides, Medieval era is a thousand years after 'antiquity' and was hugely influenced by the accelerating clash of east/west (spurred by the Mongol Empire) rather than pre-existing similarities.
At least until the 11th century, Muslim empires considered themselves inheritors of Greek intellectual culture. This at a time when Europeans had lost Greek literature and even the Greek language (Rome literally started to have trouble conversing with Constantinople centuries earlier). Europeans seem to consider Islamic civilization as a mere temporary steward of Greek culture, conveniently keeping its literature extant until it could be rightly restored to Europeans.
Yes, the shared western cultural heritage in Mongolia itself is now extremely attenuated. But that's much less true in Persia or other areas closer to the epicenter of western civilization--i.e. the Levant--some of which are closer, geographically and otherwise, than most of continental Europe, especially Western Europe.
Europeans have a bias when it comes to their inheritance--they only see the historical paths that lead to themselves. (This is a universal truism that applies to every culture.) But there were many other branches from the same origins, and other cultures only see the paths that led to their selves. Until recently North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia had their own memories of a Greek cultural heritage, albeit intermixed with other influences (as is the case with Europeans). But unfortunately the predominance of modern European culture and historical narratives, and tacit internationalization of a unique European claim, seems to have erased that memory. But the heritage exists nonetheless and can be reclaimed, the same way Europeans reclaimed their Greek cultural heritage in the late Middle Ages.
Rome and its successor states colonised western Europe over the course of ~2000 years. Hence the culture unique to the 'West' is in part that which was unique to the Romans. 'Western' doesn't so much describe culture which was indigenous to western European countries (much of which is lost) nor is it a catch all term for cultures which were influenced by the Romans to a lesser degree. It describes the cultures most heavily influenced by the colonisation of the Western Roman Empire and its successors over the longest period of time.
If Western Europe had been colonised by the Islamic Empire (in the way that the Eastern Roman empire was) then 'Western' would indeed include Islamic culture.
Britons and Danes were not Roman, their culture in antiquity was very different, yet they were gradually influence/coerced into adopting many of its cultural practices. Modern Britain and Denmark are therefore 'Western', even though e.g Persia had far more in common with the Romans/Greeks at the time. The culture of Turkish people is heavily influenced by ancient Greek and Roman colonisation, and hence they are 'more western' than other areas in the near east. Yet later conquests by Arabs and Mongols bought a much more diverse set of religious and cultural practices. Similarly, regions like Greece itself and Southern Spain have been colonised by eastern empires, and are somewhat 'less western', though they were later reintegrated into the 'West'.
I'm biased because I am Irish and the Celts are "our" ancient people (though not only ours, of course), but I wish they got more focus in popular culture. Newgrange predates the Egyptian Pyramids by a few hundred years. I wonder is it just that less remains of their society and so there is less to talk about? AIUI the insular Celts at least mostly built with wood, as opposed to the Romans and Greeks who built with stone. Still, part of me would love to see a Hollywood blockbuster made out of the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
Archeology is more difficult than reading. The civilizations which left a literary corpus (oral or written) will have more to speak about than those who didn't.
Archeology also tells us only of what metals people used, what animals they had and what they ate. Whereas literature speaks much more - of the values of those people, which makes it a more attractive target to study.
Finally, even from an archaeological perspective, trade is less interesting than war. So warlike civilizations generate more interest than trade-dominated ones.
Of course this is excluding the fact that christianity made greco-roman culture relatable to most of the west.
I find this statement confusing. Hellenistic culture was the West. All Western culture since, including Rome, has imitated it. Christianity didn't make Greco-Roman culture accessible to the West. It made monotheistic, Hebrew/Judean culture accessible to Rome (primarily by making it less harsh and less monotheistic), and then spread onward to the Germanic tribes, Celts, Slavs, Dacians, and others who came into Rome's former orbit.
Also, surely you would concede that scholars who sought to rediscover ancient greek/roman literature through a Christian lens in the 15th/16th centuries played a big role in making it accessible to the Christian world?
Well, the very strong devotion to saints IMO comes from a polytheistic approach rather than a monotheistic one, where you just have an invisible god you are not even permitted to draw or paint.
Of course sacrifices which was both a Judaic and typical polytheistic ritual was dropped from both Hebrew and Christian practice.
Oaths is another one, oaths are a very polytheistic tradition, you swear to do something with the gods as the arbiter and the judge of you actions. I don't believe Hebrew tradition is very big on taking oaths, I think they actually forbid it, I may be wrong.
As another example the Pope is a pontiff, that is a roman religious office predating Christianity.
Point is when Christianity spread in the empire it evolved to include a lot of the religious practice of the people of the empire.
Typically in a Greek sacrifice a food item I think typically some sort of animal protein was dedicated to the gods cooked on site and then split amongst the attendees, the gods are satisfied with the smoke as far as I understand.
Holy communion has very similar mechanics, food item then a ritual involving god, and then communally consumed.
The only fact-recording machine is the structures built by people, fossils, geological features etc. All written stuff is decorated and colored.
These two civilizations produced democracy and republic, the foundations of our current political system, additionally more than half of Europes legal systems are founded on roman law. Their histories are very relevant to our modern experience.
We should of course study other civilizations, but the truth of the matter is if you look into Chinese history you will find 3 millennia of imperial rule and absolute, divine mandate monarchy, fascinating but less relevant for citizens living in modern republics than say the 50 or so years before Romes transformation into a monarchy.
Greece and Rome give us facsimiles of our current political systems, there are things to be learned from studying them.
PS: Even Imperial Rome is very relevant, because as I said, it has to a great degree shaped our current rights and legal environment and as monarchies go it is unique in that the only legitimacy or any ruler was the peoples approval of their rule. i.e. it was the most democratic of the monarchies in history.
The West is the Latin Church. From the Latin Church came the Protestants. From that West meant and means anything influenced by or in protest of the Latin Church in Europe and its colonies. Very easy to understand, makes less of a difference today than it might have 100 years ago but to pretend it's hard to define or not a real thing isn't serious.
"West" is mainly used in US propaganda in order to keep its allies behind them. I feel that europe doesn't want to be defined by the "west" anymore.
See Aeschylus' The Persians
From the viewpoint of a person outside "the west" under both grounds, it's a clearly recognized entity. There may be blurred contours. That doesn't invalidate the existence of such an entity.
It has about the information/idea density of a Neal Stephenson novel (a good one), and is about equally a pageturner.
I've also adored all of Jimmy Maher's (better known as The Digital Antiquarian) amateur history books, his Wonders of the World series - I think the one on Chinese history was especially ambitious and nice.
I enjoyed Toby Wilkinson's The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, but it's a bit one-note; still looking for the Egyptian history book I'll fall in love with, though as as a general map it's quite good.
You might be overgeneralising just a little bit here as outside the US and the UK, I think few people in the Western world care about the accent of Indians when they speak English, and are not exposed to their call centers anyway.
I think most people are somewhat aware of the civilisations that occurred there.
If we are speaking of the classical times: yes, India was on-par with the greco-roman and chinese world; left a cultural imprint on east and south-east asia and traded with the western world too. But the rise of pacifist religions, being in a nice position to be attacked from central asia, and internal strifes basically rendered it useless in the last millenium. Huge population, uncontrolled urbanization and a corrupt education system is the bane of this century. If we don't solve that, no amount of classical civilization is going to help. Germanic people were considered primitive by the greeks and romans, now look where they are!
I can understand some push-back from other countries, especially when the right-wing tends to embarrassingly parade past achievements as a way to suppress criticism of current conditions, but at the moment the sheer hatred and poison have blown way past what is understandable.
It avoids having to include Pakistan in India which if you did causes a large number of people to complain especially if talking about modern things. It is less usual when talking about ancient history.
It also differentiates Indian sub continent for East Asian which covers Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Asian usually covers too much when talking about history.
Americans are most acquainted with the Romans and our system of government was designed to take the best aspects of their republic and to prevent the conditions that led to Roman imperialism. The fall of Rome is ingrained in our culture as something to be wary of, that all great civilizations fall prey to.
But it is generally understood that other parts of the world were more advanced at different times or advanced in certain technology beyond their peers at the time.
Marco Polo trade routes to China and through the silk road were popular because of the goods and products europeans couldn't make or cultivate. Even Christopher Columbus was attempting to sail to India as a more efficient trade route and that is why the natives were called Indians.
The ancient temples in India are impressive and certainly many grand civilizations rose and fell on the subcontinent. We are just less familiar with those stories as their origins didn't shape our own as directly.