Which civilisation had the biggest impact on history?

Few weeks ago I started thread "Which Civ5 civilisation had the biggest historical impact on the world history" and it was succesfull but
1) It featured only Civ5 nations and didn't include few important ones
2) It could have better choice of civilisations
3) ...mods left it because of its success but said to me that this should be in the general history forum

So...

Simple thread - which of those civs you think changed the world history the most or were the most glorious civilisations? By changing the world history I mean:
- great discoveries
- home to particularly great people
- powerful cultural or religious impact
- giant conquests
- huge economic impact
- impressive culture/monuments

Multiple voting allowed. Now I'd like to apologize for general groups like Subsaharan Africa standing next to sole national states like Japan but my previous poll has shown that including each second tier empire is just waste of space - Aztec and Maya combined had 7 votes while England had 93 and I am going to cover the entire world.

Also:
- 'civilisation' is extremely unclear term but this only adds fuel to discussions
- Mongolian Empire should rather include all Hordes of Central Asia like Timurids/Xiongnu/Huns/Gokturks
- Arabia covers the entire Golden Age of Islam, Umayyad Caliphate is the greatest of all caliphates
- Yes I know Spain and Portugal are different nations but in previous poll Portugal had very few votes and Spain not so many either so I decided to merge them as they have very close history
- Italy covers medieval Italian city states (enormous impact on the entire Europe) as well as modern industrialized Italy
- Mesoamerican and Andean Civilisations = maybe should be named 'Indigenous America'... But I know only Pueblo, Cahokia and Kuhikuru as American civs outside of Andes/Mesoamerica.
- Subsaharan Africa = generally speaking, black Africa.
- Post Colonial States - merged as poor Brazil alone had just 5 votes in previous poll despite being probably the greatest of these states
- The same with South East Asia (Burma, Siam, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia) merged with Tibet because Huntington placed them in the same Buddhist civilisation, Scandinavia and Vikings and Slavs outside of Russia.

I know this poll is imperfect, it is hard to create perfect poll like this when even the term 'civilisation' is so unclear


My own top 10
1) Rome
2) India
3) Greece
4) China
5) Mongolia
6) Arabia
7) England
8) USA
9) France
10) Spain/Portugal

At least there is no mention of the History Channel here...

Kaiserguard said:

At least there is no mention of the History Channel here...

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Is this from the History Channel?:


Link to video.

Probably from some other channel?

- impressive culture/monuments

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Such things, for example?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_King_(statue)

Here we go for the umpteenth time.

What does civilization mean? How do you define "impact on history"

Domen said:

Is this from the History Channel?:


Link to video.

Probably from some other channel?

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Pretty sure that's their watermark in the bottom right.

I urge Niall Ferguson be involved in this thread. This seems right down his alley.

Owen Glyndwr said:

Here we go for the umpteenth time.

What does civilization mean? How do you define "impact on history"

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I know every thread of this kind turns into a long discussion about how to define "civilisation", but how about this time we try to avoid that endless Platonic digression and be a bit more welcoming? Clearly there is no generally accepted definition for the term, but that doesn't stop us using it. Why not, this time, just try giving what we think are what we would call the civilisations that had the greatest impact on history, and not worry too much about whether everyone would agree that they count as "civilisations"?

My suggestions:

The ancient Hebrews, for their formulation and transmission of key ideas from the ancient Middle East to much of the rest of the world via Christianity and Islam.

Early medieval northern Europe, by which I mean Scandinavia, Germania, and the Anglo-Saxons, which I'm going to lump together into a single badly defined cultural unit since despite their different languages and political systems they broadly shared a general cultural and religious context. Modern Europe, and by extension the West in general, is basically built upon their culture, with input from others.

Well, in an attempt to seriously participate in this thread:

I have voted for Ancient Greece, Rome, the Ummayads and England.

As was said, this is a recurrent thread here. So this time i'll just leave it at Greece,China,India, due to their being an apparent center of culture for their respected regions, while being quite distinct from each other.

Next would be the more archaic civs, like Egypt and the mesopotamian culture. They seem to have been replaced later on without leaving a center of their own. Persia had similar changes (muslim expansion). Then there are the main later euro civs, Britain and France, and with them the (previous main power) Spain and (following main continental power) Germany. Russia and Japan are in there too, also in the end Usa. Then ww2 happens and we are still stuck with a dumb anti-classicism, hopefully not for a lot longer

in no particular order

greece
china
egypt
persia
england

I would have to say Sumer (mathematics) and Phoenicia (alphabet). Without either of those we would not be able to have this discussion here.

edit: NM, Dune can of worms should return to the desert.

I'd go for the Mongols for their role in transferring knowledge, technology, and ideas across Eurasia, and their drastic impact on surrounding civilizations, namely Russia, China, Japan, India, Persia and Arabia.

The British as the civilisation that shepherded the early Industrial Revolution, the Chinese as the originators of the inventions nominated by the British as being world-changing, and the Hindustanis as the progenitors of the religion that inspired the Chinese.

Honourary mentions to the successive Mexican cultures that gave us maize among other things, and the Iberian civilisations that pioneered transoceanic voyages that (for better or worse) connected the New World to the Old.

the Chinese as the originators of the inventions nominated by the British as being world-changing

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Were most of those not invented independently in the West, though?

Like... paper and gunpowder?

Flying Pig said:

Were most of those not invented independently in the West, though?

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The trend today is towards the view that the inventions diffused to the West, or improved upon by the West, rather than being independently invented there. Paper and gunpowder almost certainly diffused. The stories of the compass and printing are more complicated.

Its hard to say which had the greatest impact, since civilisations received and passed on things that didn't necessarily originate in them. The Roman Empires great contribution for example was the emergence of Christian civilisation, which was a fusion of roman legal, greek philosophical and Judaic religious spheres in terms of its intellectual content. Its a tough ask then to say which of the three civilizational sources was the greatest influence (for the legacy of Christian civilisation pretty much infuses the entire international order today thanks to the ubiquity of European colonialism and centuries of unchallenged European hegemonic power)

Tungsten-carbide drills Christian civilisation? What the bloody hell's tungsten-carbide drills Christian civilisation?