Greatest Civiliztion in History

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Will9
Rufus, you have 3 nominations left

Hard to think of three great empires that haven't already been mentioned. But I will nominate the Khmer Empire, which was truly interesting and important, and the Bulgarian Empire just because I love the idea that Bulgaria one had an Empire.

Also, I'll nominate the Byzantine empire (featuring, per above, Emperor Basil the Bulgar-Slayer!) if it counts as "Greco-Roman"; otherwise I think I've used its slot.

[Will9]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Hard to think of three great empires that haven't already been mentioned. But I will nominate the Khmer Empire, which was truly interesting and important, and the Bulgarian Empire just because I love the idea that Bulgaria one had an Empire.

Also, I'll nominate the Byzantine empire (featuring, per above, Emperor Basil the Bulgar-Slayer!) if it counts as "Greco-Roman"; otherwise I think I've used its slot.

It's both Greek and Roman so I'd say it is more Greco-Roman than any other.

[Blaupanzer]

Aztecs
Arabia
France
Korea

[DAVOUT]

I agree with Arrian on the historical significance.
And if this thread is an attempt to compare the performance of civilizations, I am of the opinion that longevity is central and that influences received of other civ or transmitted to other civ is importanat in order to appraised the performance. For instance, Mayas cannot be compared with Rome if one do not discount Rome of all medirranean influences received. Mayas cannot be compared with the US without comparing longevity of 40 centuries on one side and 2 centuries on the other; and the performance of the US civ must be discounted of the heritage of Europe, which is considerable.

[Arrian]

Wait, we're considering the Roman Empire and the Byzantine (Roman) Empire as separate?

Hmm.

How many times shall we divide China, then. Should we pick from the various dynasties (Han - and does the interregnum count?, Tang, Ming, etc?).

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Maybe Byz should be combined with Greek civ, since it was linguistically and culturally Greek, even if it called itself "Rome".

OTOH maybe Greek and Macedonian should be one civ


Heck, much of Roman culture was really Greek.

At least as much continuity there as in, say, central Mexico, no?

Fact is in the GAME civ, sometimes Civ means a civilization, sometimes it means a culture within a civilization, and sometimes it means a state. Im not quite sure what was intended here. Why not just have the civilizational entity of the month, and we can discuss it. If folks want a month devoted to the vikings, Im not going to quibble that Kenneth Clarke said the vikings really werent a civilization, nor am I going to quibble that cutting off later Scandinavian history is arbitrary.

Lets talk about American civilization and British civilization. Lets ALSO talk about Anglophone civilization, and elide the distinction. Lets ALSO talk about Western civilization. Why not?

[Barnabas]

I consider modern greeks to be direct descendants of the byzantines of 600 years ago.. for the greece also includes the byzantines.
So mentioning both is not necessary.

[Patroklos]

I consider modern greeks to be direct descendants of the byzantines of 600 years ago.. for the greece also includes the byzantines.

Modern Greeks are very little in common with their ancient counterparts. Goth and other barbarians virtually absorbed the entire populous with the exception of a few cities. It is about as ridiculous as Italians claiming to be Romans.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Barnabas
I consider modern greeks to be direct descendants of the byzantines of 600 years ago..

A friend of mine, who happens to have some loud Greek neighbors, used to say that Greeks are the offspring of Slavic women ****ed by Turks.

[Wernazuma III]

I had troubles understanding the rules, but here are my nominations (new ones):

Polynesians (counts for Asia?), Olmecs, Vikings, Ethiopians

Oh, and please cede 1 African and one American spot to both Europe and Asia.

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Modern Greeks are very little in common with their ancient counterparts. Goth and other barbarians virtually absorbed the entire populous with the exception of a few cities. It is about as ridiculous as Italians claiming to be Romans.

I dont mean ancient greeks (aristotle, plato and the bunch) who are from 2300+ years ago.

I mean greek speakers of 600 years ago, which isnt that far back in time, before the turks conquered constantinople in 1453. (America discovered in 1492, Luther´s tesis 1517, relatively recent)

Under muslim control christian men cant marry muslim women, so that has kept greeks pretty endogamous the last half millenium. The same can be said about all christian minorities in the middle east, marrying outside the ethnic group was pretty much forbidden for them.
Christian women could marry muslim men, but then, the offspring would be raised muslim, and no longer be considered greek, copt, armenian, assyrian etc.

So greeks nowadays, are the byzantines who were not turkified the last 500 years.

Second, the barbarians were not huge masses of people, visigoths, franks, ostrogoths did not absorbe the populations, they were small ruling elites.
The iberian peninsula had over 5 million natives, and visigoths were between 200.000 and 300.000 people for example.

The only places were barbarians may have absorbed the natives, are places like england, ex yugoslavia etc, places which used to be roman, but now are germanic or slavic, but you cant discard the possibility of genocide in those cases.

Also it depends on where the italian is from, lets not forget italy was conquered by the romans, southern italy was greek (magna grecia) and had phoenician colonies, around tuscany you had the etruscans, in the po valley you had celts.

The natives of Rome nowadays have a better claim than anybody I would say, after all rome has been a continuously inhabited city for all this time, romans speak a neo-latin language (and in the vatican they never stopped speaking in latin) altough of course they are not direct descendants, since nothing like that exists, rome had people from all around the empire, not only natives, and being roman in the empire became a political thing, not a blood/ancestry thing.

[Will9]

I've decided on the following:

historical significance will not be doubled

I will wait for further nominations to decide which groups will have less 3 spots and which will have 5.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Arrian
Wait, we're considering the Roman Empire and the Byzantine (Roman) Empire as separate?

Hmm.

How many times shall we divide China, then. Should we pick from the various dynasties (Han - and does the interregnum count?, Tang, Ming, etc?).

-Arrian

Not really a valid comparison. The Roman and Byzantine empires were far more distinct from each other -- culturally, socially, politically, and linguistically -- than any two Chinese dynasties. We could talk about whether the Byzantine empire begins with Constantine or only after the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, but it's definitely distinct.

[OzzyKP]

The "byzantine empire" began as the Roman empire and always considered itself part the Roman empire, and everyone else around them considered them the Roman empire. It was only recently that we came up with a new term for them. Why would they be distinct?

You can't expect the culture and social life and such to remain stagnant for a full 1,000 years, do you? Things adapt. Half the empire fell and the other half adapted to the east. But that doesn't mean it became a new empire.

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
The "byzantine empire" began as the Roman empire and always considered itself part the Roman empire, and everyone else around them considered them the Roman empire. It was only recently that we came up with a new term for them. Why would they be distinct?

You can't expect the culture and social life and such to remain stagnant for a full 1,000 years, do you? Things adapt. Half the empire fell and the other half adapted to the east. But that doesn't mean it became a new empire.

Exactly, they felt Roman, but time evolves so things are bound to change. In fact you can't say the Romans during the Empire were just the same as the Romans in the early Republic. It's sort of the same with the Byzantines imo. However, it being distinctly christian in nature makes it in a lot of respects different (among other reasons) from the 'classical' Romans