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Actually I would say Sumer, though I kind of cheated because I'm watching these video lectures on the Foundations of Western Civilization. Sumer (the Mesopotamian region between and around the Tigris and Euphrates) went from 3800 B.C. to 3200 B.C. under the “Urak” period, then until 2350 B.C. under the “Dynastic” period. When Sargon conquered around 2350 he assimilated Sumer's culture into the Akkadian culture, thereby giving Sumerian ideas and practices a greater range. Then when Hammurabi of the Old Babylonians conquered around 1750 B.C., he too adopted the culture of Sumer. As indicated in the program, Sumer offered a variety of significant cultural practices including polytheism, syncretism (assimilation of the gods of conquered cities), animism within religion, consideration of gods as person-like but immortal and super-powerful, laws prohibiting or promoting specific behavior, etc. It was also out of Sumer that we get the Epic of Gilgamesh. I didn't realize it but it seems like Sumer was quite significant in the overall foundation of Western Civ.
Interesting. Where those earlier kingdoms all that unified? Is unification of society a prerequisite of WC?OK, we consider the America's part of Western Civ, so are the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas considered Western Civ? Why or why not?
According to the program there was no unified nation called “Sumer”, but rather different cities/towns that made it up (such as Uruk, from which we get the name of the first age of Sumerian development). I would have to say the tribes of the Americas were not part of Western Civ because their foundation was not based upon that common to the rest of Western Civilization, even though they geographically fall into the “West”.
But aren?t all the cultural underpinnings of current western Civilization descended from the Greeks and Romans as our cultural forebears with a later Jewish influence descended from the Christians? The earlier eastern civilizations moved away from the western model with the division of the ancient Mediterranean world between Greeks and Persians.I cannot argue with civilization beginning in the ancient Near East, but they are not our cultural ancestors, the Greeks and Romans are. The question becomes, what cultural elements do we derive from the Near East? This thread is about Western Civilization not civilization as a whole.
Sumer was a crossroads for both the Occident and the Orient. I went with the Phoenicians because they gave us our alphabet and with Davidic Israel because it gave us our moral/religious heritage. There is no right or wrong answer here because the West draws so much from so many cultures. Rome itself was a melting pot of tribes and conquered peoples. Rome made it a point to assimilate established cultural traditions as a means of pacifying and controlling potential rebellion.
I think scout makes a good point. We may be defining civilization, but defining Western Civ can get tricky.
I would say that Rome had the single biggest impact on our civilization, but if we go back to the real origin it may very well have been Sumer (or some other similar civilization if one so wants to argue). After Rome it would be Greece, but some of this is because of the influence that Greece had on Rome. Certainly some, if not many Sumerian concepts did not influence us directly, but if we think of Western Civ more in terms of dominoes, then IMO Sumer was one of the first ones to fall (even if it's not the biggest domino in the sequence).BTW I thought this topic would work better in "Asia Minor and Egypt" - hope you don't mind.
Western Civilisation is somewhat of a misnomer, we should probably be talking about western Culture. On this I will continue to argue for the primacy of Greece and Rome. Most western laws have much more in common with the Roman Imperial Code than the Code of Hammurabi. The familial institutions of the west are directly descended from the Greek and Roman notions of family as well as our more permissive attitude towards womens roles.I cant think of many cultural influences on the west that come from the Near East. Perhaps the Ten Commandments, but those proscriptions for the most part fit within Roman tradition as well and so tend to reinforce the Roman influence rather than add something new. Perhaps the most pervasive Near East influence is Christianity, which is a common cultural theme throughout the west.
Don't forget about British Commonwealthman Legal Tradition which married itself to Roman Legal Tradition. Scholars like Bernard Bailyn, Pocock, and Edmund S. Morgan among others…would remind us that the British legal tradition diverged away from Continental Europe on many fronts.
Don't forget about British Commonwealthman Legal Tradition which married itself to Roman Legal Tradition. Scholars like Bernard Bailyn, Pocock, and Edmund S. Morgan among others...would remind us that the British legal tradition diverged away from Continental Europe on many fronts.
That speaks to my point that we owe the Romans and Greeks far more than any of the Near Eastern cultures.
Western Civilisation is somewhat of a misnomer, we should probably be talking about western Culture. On this I will continue to argue for the primacy of Greece and Rome. Most western laws have much more in common with the Roman Imperial Code than the Code of Hammurabi. The familial institutions of the west are directly descended from the Greek and Roman notions of family as well as our more permissive attitude towards womens roles.I cant think of many cultural influences on the west that come from the Near East. Perhaps the Ten Commandments, but those proscriptions for the most part fit within Roman tradition as well and so tend to reinforce the Roman influence rather than add something new. Perhaps the most pervasive Near East influence is Christianity, which is a common cultural theme throughout the west.
I would not disagree with you about Greece or Rome. In fact, Rome has by far the greatest impact on Western Civilization. One of the key reasons is because after Rome, history seemed to have been entranced by Rome - through the Renaissance and other ages that essentially tried to relive Rome's greatness. However, this does not mean that Rome was the first or the only civilization with influence. The Judao-Christian tradition, originating outside Europe, had an integral impact on Western Civ as well and I would argue that Rome's influence would not have occurred without that "Near Eastern" influence.But what I was originally arguing was the significance of the Sumerian influence from the Mesopotamian region. I didn't mean to give the impression that I was belittling Rome or Greece. Here's a book on Sumerian influence which covers some of the things they gave us:History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History
That makes me think of the book about how the Scots invented the Modern World. I do not deny Eastern influence, I just contend that any Eastern influences were minor compared to Greece and Rome. That is always excepting the Judeao-Christian influence, which was and still is decisive in the formation of western culture and civilization.
