Which civilisation had the biggest impact on history?

[Kyriakos]

Mmmm, highly witty response taken out

 

[Domen]

Greeks are civilized enough to be called Greeks but not enough to call others Barbarians.

 

[Domen]

Something about Phoenicians (and their extension - Carthage):

http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/phoenicians.shtml

Spoiler :

Link to video.

 

[TheLastOne36]

I didn't know Illyrians colonized/inhabited the eastern coast of Italy.

That map would benefit from including the Etruscans as a color&territory.

 

[Domen]

I also didn't know this. BTW - I have a historical atlas which shows Malta as Phoenician, not Greek.

Also not all major colonies are shown by this map, some cities are still missing.

 

[History_Buff]

Christianity in general originated within the Roman Empire.

And Catholicism was in fact born as Roman state religion.

Orthodoxy as well, but it was Eastern Roman state religion.

Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy were born as one religion; both originated out of the Roman State Church, who's doctrine was established by the First Council of Nicaea. This was during a period when the Empire was one political unit, under Constantine.

Over time, the eastern and western churches grew apart, but by the time Roman Catholicism is out of communion with the Orthodox church, Rome-in-the-West had been gone for centuries.

 

[ParkCungHee]

That's true enough, although in fairness I think you might be drawing too much out of an off-hand example. My point is that I'm sceptical that we can talk about "Christian civilisation", not that we should instead talk about "Ethiopian civilisation". Ideally, we'd talk about people, who tend to defy easy categories.

Well, yes. But if you're going to discuss civilizations, you could do a lot worse than to use Christendom as one of your categories.

 

[Kyriakos]

The map does not look very believable..
Where is the Mesopotamian civ?
Why is Egypt limited to that region?

Babylon, Egypt and Lydia were allied against Persia.

'Thracians' in 550 BC did not fall neatly in the present-day border of Bulgaria. For starters the Getae were also Thracian (Herodotos names them as such) and they inhabited southern present-day Romania as well.

Illyria looks particularly suspect. Googling for a bit i also read that it is highly disputed that actual Illyrian people were in large parts of eastern Italy.

So it is a very Baal-like map

 

[gay_Aleks]

The map does not look very believable..
Where is the Mesopotamian civ?
Why is Egypt limited to that region?

Do you even Persia?

Although, even then, it seems rather bothersome Persia was at those borders. I think this map is too busy with the Mediterranean nations (excluding, apparently, Egypt) and less with the mongrels living in the East (that were ages ahead).

Also, a question: Why there's a Greek colony in Tripoli and what's the deal with the enclave in Egypt?

 

[Kyriakos]

The egyptian Greek settlement is Naucratis, created by a number of Greek cities as a permanent trading post

The other is Cyrene and its domain (the name Cyrenaica defined that region in antiquity). Cyrene was a very important cultural center of the Greek world even before the Hellenistic expansion to Egypt and Persia. Apart from a number of famous mathematicians from Cyrene (eg Theodoros and his students, and later on Eratosthenes), it is argued- iirc- that the 'Garden of Hesperides' was in that region (from the mythical story of the Argonauts).

 

[gangleri2001]

Worst poll options ever.

 

[Tahuti]

Yeah, Catalonia and Poland (as an individual poll option) are missing!

 

[gangleri2001]

I'm tired of being compared to Domen and other Polish nationalists around here. I'm not even a 1/1000 as annoying as they are with their nationalism. Have you ever seen a thread being Catalonia-jacked? No, right? So please, stop it.

 

[Domen]

Spoiler :

That's because you are not a nation-state or civic nationalist, but a regional or ethnic nationalist. You are probably more similar to my uncle with his Silesian point of view and Silesian prejudices (there are similar Anti-Rest-Of-Spain prejudices in Catalonia as Anti-Some-Parts-Of-Poland prejudices in Silesia):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13206363&postcount=226

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=521071&page=12







=============================================

In addition to my Silesian uncle's views posted above, you can also check this German propaganda video:

"They want Silesia for Silesians and don't want to be governed by politicians in Warsaw":

So they don't want to be governed by Judeo-Mazovian-Ruskies from Warsaw (just like my old uncle):


Link to video.

 

[Domen]

Did I mention that my Silesian uncle says that Warsaw is an ugly city because it is a Jewish city ???

But at least he never said anything openly Anti-Semitic. BTW - he was born in 1938.

 

[Plotinus]

Moderator Action: Enough - stick to the topic, not arguing about nationalism.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[gangleri2001]

Let me answer him just this time because of allusions.

If you think that Catalan nationalism is far-right nationalism and that it's us hating Spain and not the other way around, you basically have no idea what you're talking about.

And no, we don't think of ourselves as "True Spaniards". We're not Spaniards. Spaniards are another ethnicity. Period.

Moderator Action: Infracted for spam. I asked you to stop this argument.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Domen]

Off-Topic response to gangleri2001 inside the spoiler:

Spoiler :

And which nationalism is far-right?

BTW since when is far-left nationalism any better?

All Scottish people on this forum are nationalists, since they will vote for independence of Scotland.

Kaiserguard is Jewish, but he is a German nationalist apparently.

Kyriakos is a Greek nationalist. Flying Pig is an English or maybe British nationalist.

Etc., etc.

We're not Spaniards. Spaniards are another ethnicity. Period.

This is just BS propaganda from historical point of view.

You are no less Spanish and no more specific than any other Spanish regional group.

Spain was put together from a collection of many regional ethnolinguistic groups.

Pretty much like Italy, Germany, France, England, Britain, etc.

If Catalans are not Spanish, then nobody is Spanish. "Spanish" is a meta-ethnicity.

Moderator Action: Infracted for spam. I asked you to stop this argument.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Tahuti]

Kaiserguard is Jewish, but he is a German nationalist apparently.

I wouldn't say I'm a nationalist, let alone a German nationalist. As much as I like things that happen to have something to do German history and German culture, I have lived in the Netherlands for most of my life and I am also of Dutch descent, so in daily life I'd identify more readily with the Netherlands than with anything else, including Germany.

I prefer to identify with regional identities of places I have lived in (i.e. Friesland, Amsterdam) and simultaneously with continental identies (i.e. Europe) over national identities, which I find largely an outgrowth of modernist thought and comparatively artificial, the result of an all-out teleological and political effort rather than something that arose spontaneously.

 

[Domen]

Continental identities are comparatively more artificial than national ones.

As much as I like things that happen to have something to do German history and German culture

Well, you see, and I simply like things that have something to do with Polish history.

Like you, I prefer regional identities over national, but the region I live in is the cradle of Poland as a nation.

The Netherlands was part of the HRE, so we can say it has something to do with "German" history. But as you noticed, German national identity is an artificial result of all-out teleological and political efforts. Dutch identity emerged spontaneously as a separate identity in opposition to that forged "Pan-German" identity.

Most of national identities exist "in opposition" to others and thus are based on perceived - both stereotypical and real - differences from surrounding nations, rather than on similarities within a given nation.

Also concepts like "civilization" are based on perceived differences from others rather than similarities within. "Western Europe" wants to be called "Western" because they would like to be seen as different than (and existing in opposition to) "Eastern Europe"; not because there are any strong similarities between countries which claim to be within "WE". The concept is artificial, more artificial than Central Europe.

CE is to some extent also an attempt of former Russian / Soviet satelite states to avoid being labelled as "Russia". So it also exists "in opposition" to something. But IMO this CE thing is less artificial than WE thing.

The concept of CE is older than Communism and perhaps also older than the concepts of WE and EE

national identities, which I find largely an outgrowth of modernist thought and comparatively artificial

Some of them are more artificial (like German) than some others (like Dutch), though.

National identities are fluent and weaker than regional ones in "transition regions" located in borderlands between nations. On the other hand, they are stronger in more centrally located regions.