freediver wrote Yesterday at 4:26pm:
Quote:So all those outside places influenced western civilisation.
They were western civilisation. The "west" didn't magically emerge from a bunch of clever european hunter gatherers a few centuries ago at the start of the industrial revolution. It has been developing very slowly since farming started in earnest in the middle east about 10000 years ago.
Quote:Find one author who says the West was outside Europe at that time.
Same answer to the last time you asked.
Quote:Again, how can Islam destroy what was already destroyed?
Rape. Pillage. Slaughter. Oppression. Basically, what Muhammad did to the previously multicultural society of Mecca and surrounds, expanded over nearly all of western civilisation. The term I used was "locked in". Civilisation has a habit of re-emerging from the ashes. It is very difficult to destroy. The destruction of the Roman Empire was not necessarily the same thing as the destruction of western civilisation. Same with all the previous civilisations in Egypt and further east that collapsed and sprang up again. They did not re-invent the wheel every single time, and just happen to do it bigger and better. People remember and do it all again on a grander scale. Unless something like Islam comes along and doesn't let it.
That's why the European fringe was able to build on what they inherited from Rome and all the previous civilisations. It inevitably inherited much of the knowledge, culture etc during Roman occupation, but escaped the degradation of Islam. Many Americans today still throw the word "republic" around with more reverence than the word democracy. This is not because the Muslims failed to destroy every copy of The Odyssey and allowed the Europeans to get hold of a copy. It's because their ancestors were ruled by Rome and spent centuries marvelling at the infrastructure left behind by them, which piqued their interest in how the Romans managed to create such a grand empire, and their ability to relate to the efforts of the early Romans (and Greeks etc) to avoid being ruled by tyrants.
freediver wrote Yesterday at 4:59pm:
chimera wrote Yesterday at 4:55pm:
You are getting confused because when I say western, you hear european. They are two different words, with different meanings. As I already explained, your confusion is actually evidence of the degradations of Islam. You cannot even think of the middle east and north africa as western civilisation, even though for about 8000 years they were the center of western civilisation and the most advanced civilisation on earth, because you cannot reconcile that history with the degradation you see there today. It is all gone.
chimera wrote Yesterday at 5:04pm:
So you didn't read a word? In the second wiki that I posted :
'To fully understand the origins of the history of Western civilization, we must begin with the word itself: the West.
The West was defined or origin with the birth of the Western Roman Empire, a division of the Roman Empire, of which Rome remained the center or hub. Its official language was Latin. Therefore, the West is defined in relation to Rome.'
Middle East.
West.
https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/navigation-basics.html If you are going to make an appeal to authority, you should at least find someone who can string a sentence together.
Why do you suppose the west is not defined that way any more? Or is that just your author mincing his words again?
You can define the west any way you want. People do, for convenience. Like you equating it with European. Those who research "western literature" will tell you that the west began with Greece. Not because history began in Greece, but because you will struggle to find much literature from before then. So as well as being wrong, you are picking on a pointless semantic issue. There is a very good reason why I, and the historians who research the topic, lump those countries together and call them the west. This reason has been explained to. Whether this is the "correct" definition kind of misses the point. But if you insist on equating the west with Europe, you should probably ask yourself why you don't just say Europe. People might understand what you are trying to say. I suspect you are just upset because including the middle east and north africa in the definition sets an impossible target for Muslim countries to achieve. It is much easier for you to talk about how wonderful they are, or were, if you remove any context of what came before, during, or after.
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