Periods of Western history

>/int/eresting quality thread
>no replies

>feels/dubs/fedora/shitposting threads
>gorillions of replies

...

Postmodern era was born in France?

>>32627133
Not really. If anything Germany is the architect of what happened after 1870. Hell, both Nazism and Communism spawned from this hellhole.

>>32627133
Well I'm not sure it should be counted as a period at all, it's kind of hard to tell after 1789 since artistic styles dissolve and culture becomes formless. But philosophically postmodernism is post-structuralism, which is pretty much an entirely French thing originally (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze...), although it had the largest impact in the US.

>>32626494
>western history started at the Middle Ages
Lmao

>>32627622
Well yeah.

"Middle Ages" is a pretty retarded term though and a throwback to an idiotic view of history.

>>32627676
Most Western country would start it with the Romans.

>>32627812
That makes no sense at all, Rome is the empire that unified Hellenic civilisation. It was an end, not a beginning.

>>32627676
>what are Phoenicians
>what are pre-Dorian Greeks
>what are ancient Greeks
>what are ancient Romans
>implying these were not the basis for entire western civilization
>inb4 "hurr dis don't count as western because of muh aryan white heritage"

I feel all fuzzy inside.

>>32627919
Romans did not end the Hellenic civilization. They preserved and improved it. Much like the Akkadians did with Sumer

>>32627943
>what are...
A bunch of non-Westerners you dumb shit.

None of those were the "basis" of any other civilisation but their own. Civilisations are like organisms of the highest order, their characters are their own.

>>32628044
They didn't improve the culture, by Roman times Hellenic culture was completed and had stopped its development. It had hardened, you might say died. The Romans expanded it.

Exactly like Akkad for Mesopotamia, or Qin for China, or the Turks for the East.

>>32628215
>Anon actually believes everything his culture and civilization ever created wasn't created before by other cultures and civilizations which copied and improved the creation of other civilizations
Cultures and civilizations are no less than a Blanda upp of other preceding cultures and civilizations reincarnated under a different name, on a different time, with seldom major changes from one version to the next
There are a few exceptions, however, but these are on isolated geographical locations and we are talking on western history in this thread

>>32628601
Tell me what is Greek, Roman, Jewish, or Mesopotamian about a Gothic cathedral, a Renaissance oil painting with perspective, or a Baroque polyphonic fugue?

inb4 this particular masonry technique or Afghan colour. A culture isn't made of the techniques used to express it any more than a story is made of ink.

>>32628344
After the Akkadian dominance the newly merged sumerian-Akkadian culture began spreading rapidly(assyrian and Babylonian empires) and taking influences from many other cultures and thus became enriched

After the unification of the Chinese states imperial China experienced many prolonged period of scientific and cultural golden ages(han,tang and even the Mongol yuan dynasties)

As for the turks, culture and arts have flourished in their tolerant,multicultural empire, almost in comparison to lee-islamic Persian empires
Now why the same thing has failed miserably today? Because of jews and niggers

>>32627943
>Phoenicians
>Greeks
>Romans
>White

>>32628044
>USA did not end European history. Hollywood movies only preserved and improved it.

>>32628344
Are you drunk?
You're either drunk or you're stupid as fuck.
Keep posting, I find your posts amusing.
>>32629039
>>32629115
Oh shit, there's still hope for you, here comes another idiot.

>>32629021
No, in all those cases the culture stopped developing as it was united into a single empire, and they remained essentially the same since that moment. Same art, same architecture, no more scientific or mathematical advances, just the occasional invention or engineering innovation, if that.

In my opinion, it begins with all the hunter/gatherer, then moves onto the farming cultures which were spread across Europe. Finally, it gets to the really ancient Greeks, followed by the Greeks we all know and love. Somewhere in here is also old Celtic cultures. The Romans come next, and then we begin with OP's post

>>32629258
What's the point of your post? It has absolutely no content beyond telling us you're butthurt. So I guess well done, we're now all aware of that.

>>32629471
We're talking about Western civilisation, not all mankind. And if we were talking about all mankind what you said makes no sense either since it ignores most of it, and just picks two civilisations out of nine or ten.

>>32628990
prove your point by saying Europeans could have developed all these stuff suppose they existed on an isolated continent throughout their time, like the abbos in Australia.
If somehow it's proven, than without any doubts they are of the superior race of mankind and are able to create wonderful civilizations without interacting with other peoples

>>32629613
Oh, well. I though we just meant Europe in general

I think you would like this:

http://geacron.com/home-en/

I'm sure you can figure it out yourself

>>32629258
(sry I'm drunk) But I think relation between Romans and Helenic Greeks or Akkadians and Sumerians were similar like ones between Europe and USA - brand new powerful empire "without culture" replace old, but still recognize cultural achievement of the old one, yet in slightly "theme park version"

>>32629637
The burden of proof is on you, claiming that Western civilisation is not the creation of Westerners.

And you didn't answer my question. Everything I mentioned is purely Western and completely different from anything that ever existed anywhere else. And all of them express the same soul, that only the West has. If you can see the common thread in all three of them, you will have understood the Western soul.

>>32629780

You may be on to something here

>>32629670
Europe is a culturally and historically meaningless term. It has been partial home to three civilisations. The home of Western civilisation is Western Europe and nowhere else.

>>32629780
Exactly.

Same with Mayas and Aztecs, China and Qin, Easterners and Turks. It happens to every civilisation.

It's not yet certain that it will be the USA for us though, but currently that does seem the most likely.

>>32629780
If you mean Sumer, the Romans didn't know about it. It had been lost and forgotten by then.

Most ancient cultures are modern inventions by the British and French who colonized the Middle East

>>32630073
5 cultures blended together

1. Greeks
2. Romans
3. Germans
4. Jewish
5. British

>>32630210

>Most ancient cultures are modern inventions by the British and French who colonized the Middle East

>5 cultures blended together
No they didn't.

>British
Oh God what...

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If we're doing the whole post-roman Europe i'd push the start of meroving period at least half a century further.
Theodoric and his ostrogoths ruled whole Italy since they've taken it from Odoacer around 493. Then through marriages and threats he projected his power over all neighbours. It was only after his death Franks could even begin to really start some imperial (as opposed to regional) shit.

Although i wouldn't classify it as a period, his dynasty didn't last, nor did his kingdom. Ripped apart by infighting and Byzantium.

>>32626494
>Merovingian Period (486 - 800)
>birthplace: France
ayy

>>32627192
>If anything Germany is the architect of what happened after 1870. Hell, both Nazism and Communism spawned from this hellhole.
This is actually true.

But not just the ideologies. Lenin was recruited to destabilise the Russian Empire after they refused peace talks despite their de-facto military defeat in WW1 by the German Empire. They used their connections through the German Social Democratic Party to mobilise him, handing him millions of Reichsmark in gold so he could set up the Pravda as a leading newspaper and prepare for revolution. Without this support the Soviet Empire could have never been built.

The German Empire attempted similar strategies in the West too. They attacked the multinational Empires of France and the UK through their Islamic soldiers, having the Sultan call for a holy war against those nations. They also supplied the Irish with weapons during their Easter Revolt.

>>32630314
What are you talking about?

British and French archeologist are who we should be thanking for most of our knowledge on Middle Eastern ancient cultures

It began with the European aristocracy interested in strange objects during the late Renaissance. They had rooms of bizarre objects (called the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities in those times) from around the world, which later evolved into what we now know as museums.

>Besides the most famous, best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Because of this, France's Egyptomania took off during the late 18th century. The British followed suit.

Hell, the Sphinx was buried in sand when the French got to Egypt.

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>>32629529
>>32629926
>>32629780
>>32630031
>>32630210

A very short list of Greek words for you (I could list thousands):

Mathematics
Physics
Geometry
Chemistry
Trigonometry
Therapy
Mechanics
Poetry
Music
Architecture
Theater
Tragedy
Comedy
Strategy
Telescope
Democracy
Automaton
Electricity
and a non-Greek word:
Algebra which is an Arab word

Why use these Greek words, and the Arabic one?
Why not use the words of the Western civilization you speak of? You know, the one that flourished AFTER everything Greek and Roman was dead.
Why do you speak my language? Why not speak the language of your Western civilization? Why is scientific terminology STILL Greek?
Why are such an idiot (also Greek word)?

>>32630210
Of course I know it, as well as I know near east civilizations were discovered by French and British (with some Germans, Americans and even one or two Czechs). I mean Sumerian x Akkadian relationships.

British = Celtic + German/French + Norman

>>32630447
Well Merovingian times aren't really Western civilisation properly speaking, more like the primordial goo from which the West emerged.

>>32628215
>Romans
>Not Western
The split of the Roman Empire into West and East was what established the West...

>>32630641
If you really wanted to prove the Greek influence, you should have used the arts. That is ultimately the biggest Greek influence of all. Pretty much all of our art comes from them

>>32630618
I thought you were saying ancient cultures never existed but were made up by French and British.

Anyway Europe has no cultural unity and never did, the only thing people on it have in common is that they're vaguely white.

>>32630641
You remind me of the old Greek father in ''My big, fat Greek Wedding''. That nigga wouldn stop talkin about the Greek origins of the words because he, as a man and a Greek, had no other pride and lived a dull life owning a shitty Greek restaurant.

>>32630618
>Archeologist

There goes another Greek word.

The first person to present a SCIENTIFIC calculation of the Earth's circumference was Aristarchus of Samos.
He was also the first to present a Heliocentric model of the known universe (our solar system).
He even calculated the size of the moon and the sun, as well as their distances from the Earth in terms of Earth's radius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distances_%28Aristarchus%29

There was a time in Europe (during the period your precious Western civilization was developing) when you burned people for repeating or supporting the Aristarchus' scientific research.

That's YOUR civilization alright

>>32630858
I mentioned
Tragedy
Comedy
Theater
Music
etc

>>32630884
>the only thing people on it have in common is
Not necessarily. Do your local church bells ring at noon day? So does the rest of Europe's bells. There is one.

>>32630921
>when you burned people for repeating or supporting the Aristarchus' scientific research
no there wasn't

>>32630641
All of those concepts are universal and exist in every civilisation. The words are bland and dry.

It's more interesting to look at the words that are closer to a culture's soul. Western words like power, force, or character. None of those words which seem so basic to us even exist in ancient Greek. Just like no Western language can accurately translate ancient Greek concepts like σῶμα, μοῖρα, or ἀταραξία.

>>32630641
Calm down, I recognize Greek achievements. Romans were so successful only because their procedure was
>stole inventions from Greeks / Etruscans
>improve them
>mass produce them
(And Romans were great Greekboos >>32629780 )

btw. pay debts

>>32630797
No, it's what established the East, or rather made it independent. There's a reason the Western Empire collapsed almost immediately.

>>32630710
British culture in itself is a unique creation during the Late Middle Ages, when the royal aristocracy began distancing themselves from France.

British = French + English

>>32630858
>Pretty much all of our art comes from them
What the fuck.

See >>32628990

Is the only kind of art you've ever seen romanboo Renaissance marble nudes?

>>32631052
>church bells
Yeah that's just a Christian thing, I think it's even Old Testament.

>>32630884
>implying all European countries weren't influenced by 1) Christianity 2) Roman (Greek) culture

>>32631521
So was the Near East and North Africa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA5DO3BQO0o
an elderly german women fight against neo-nazi.

>>32631373
In my book art is something different from architecture, but i see what you mean.

Art in the post referred to plays and poetry

>>32631510
Church bells are rung at noon daily by order of the Pope back in the 1400s so that Europeans will remember when the Turks invaded the Hungarians/Austrians

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>>32626494
Just my two cents on your interesting thread. Now, this is diplomacy/culture/military and some others things mixed in. As much as I can think of for one period and will place necessary prefixes where necessary. Might as well mention this is Europe only. There's much to expand if we're to add more continents. I also made these two lists and am looking to expand them.

>457 AD - 800 AD
Most influential country: Lombard kingdom
Most powerful country: Merovingian domain (Burgundy and Austrasia)

>800 AD - 925 AD
Most influential country: Holy Roman Empire
Most powerful country: Holy Roman Empire

>925 - 1190
Most influential country: Holy Roman Empire
Most powerful country: Holy Roman Empire

>1190 AD - 1301 AD
Most influential country: Kingdom of France
Most powerful country: Kingdom of France

>1301 AD - 1445 AD
Most influential country: Kingdom of France
Most powerful country: -

>1445 - 1640
Most influential country: The Spanish Empire
Most powerful country = The Spanish Empire

>1640 - 1815
Most influential country: Kingdom/Republic/Empire of France
Most powerful country: Kingdom/Republic/Empire of France

>1815 - 1918
Most influential country: The British Empire
Most powerful country: The British Empire
(despite the Austrian Empire holding firm dominance for 40 years into the Concert of Europe - see "Great Powers" section on wiki)

>1918 - 1945
Most influential country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Most powerful country: Nazi Germany

>1945 -
Most influential country: United States
Most powerful country: United States

The "powerful" rank is not just military.

>>32630917
WTF is your point?
Is there anything more important than language?
Has there ever been a more important language than Greek? If you think so, try having a discussion that revolves around science (any science) without mentioning one Greek word.
What kind of pride do you have as a nation and as an individual?
Name one thing Canada has accomplished without using any of the sciences the ancient Greeks established, systematized, and developed.
Alexander the Great began the Hellenistic period.
The Romans conquered Greece, and we assimilated them.
The Ottomans conquered Greece, and we assimilated them.
No other country has ever achieved this in the history of humankind.

>>32631052
Copernicus' publication On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres was not published until after he died in order for him to avoid being persecuted by the Church. What followed is often called the Copernican Revolution, but this actually was not much of a revolution. The book was published in Latin, so the general public was not able to read it. Academics could, but few learned people were willing to face the Church and risk death. It wasn't even until 73 years after it was published, 1616, that the Church consider it important enough to place on its Index of Prohibited Books.

>Academics could, but few learned people were willing to face the Church and risk death.

Perhaps I'm mistaken about the 'burn' part. But the Catholic church surely persecuted and punished those people that went against their views.

>>32631276
Character is a Greek word you damn autistic sperglord.
power = ΔΥΝΑΜΙΣ
force = ΙΣΧΥΣ
I'm done with you, fucking clown.

>>32626494
>Renaissance
>Started in Italy
>Not in Istanbul
>Not even Spain

u wot m8

>>32628990
>a Gothic cathedral

A monument of Roman Catholocism. A product of the clergy with roots to Roman times.

>a Renaissance oil painting with perspective

Do you know what Renaissance means?

The Renaissance was fueled by the exodus of Greeks from Byzantium after it fell.

Feudalism and the clergy as a ruling class and diplomatic instutition all date back to antiquity.

There is a region in Germany called Franconia which was named after Frankish lords had settled there. They took the system of manorialism, which was a continuation of the Roman villa system, from Gaul with them and implemented it there.


Civilization in Germany did not start from scratch.

Early German civlization was like Greek civilization. It got the best elements from its neighbors that were suited for its environment.

>>32631632
Well I already mentioned our visual arts and music are completely different from ancient Greeks, but same goes for our plays. Compare a Greek tragedy with one by Shakespeare. Greek figures are just that, figures. They're defined by their stance, they have no inner development, and they're just subjected to fate like playthings, as even the gods are. You could replace any figure from a Greek play by any other person and the story wouldn't be affected. By contrast, the Western character is defined by his living character. He is the force behind the tragedy, not fate, his thoughts, his character and his actions are what drive the play.

>>32631980
>You could replace any figure from a Greek play by any other person and the story wouldn't be affected. By contrast, the Western character is defined by his living character. He is the force behind the tragedy, not fate, his thoughts, his character and his actions are what drive the play.

It seems to me like you haven't read Hamlet.

>>32631354
English is French + native. British was/is an already established islander "mentality". There was no proper "British collective" until the unification well into 18th century. England on the other hand is a very unique country during history. Developed its society far from the clutches of Romano-Byzantine, Latin despotism that encompassed continental way of life, Germanic law, lax rights, unique taxation system, parliament, et cetera...you can only imagine if the French didn't try and settle England and influence their language. You'd have another very special thing from the Isles. Most things English and their native ingenuity with little tampering from the continent. Even their early modernity economic/legislation views were something completely else from those of continental Europe.

>>32631735
>still believing old Protestant propaganda

Copernicus was well respected during his time and well-known scientist. He was persecuted for other "crimes" against the Church. "Crimes" because it was more like he disagreed with them. The Church didn't persecute him for his science

He spent YEARS studying in Italy, m8. People knew what he was studying. People were fascinated and supported his education enough to keep him going.

>>32631980
The evolution of European plays (all being built on the previous):
Greek - > Rome -> Italian -> Old French -> Elizabethan (Shakespeare)

Our modern play is an evolved form of Greek plays. At the core, however, they share the same DNA.

>>32626494

Western Civilization is by definition the result of Rome, Greece and Christianism.

I would have it starting with the Roman Empire, at the very least, and all the way back to dorian Greece for its genesis.

Also, pretty bizarre that subdivision of the historical periods...

>Romanesque
>Gothic
>Baroque

What is this? History of Art?

Subdivide the Middle Ages into High (genesis of feudalism, ~1000) Central (apex of feudalism, ~1250) and Low (crisis of feudalism) and nothing more.

Then the Modern Age, subdived into 2 periods, before and after the Treaty of Westfalia, if anything at all.

>>32631729

>800 AD - 925 AD
>Holy Roman Empire
That seems unlikely, given the HRE was founded in 962...

>925 - 1190
>Most influential country: Holy Roman Empire
I don't think so, Romanesque art was born in France, and the Cluniac Reform and the Crusades which are the two events that defined this era and the awakening of Catholicism and Western culture as a whole were almost entirely French. France is also the birthplace of feudalism and chivalry, also at that time.

>1445 - 1640
>Most influential country: The Spanish Empire
Really? Not Italy during the Renaissance?

>>32632123
I agree. French is without a doubt the biggest influence on the Isle.

In my opinion, the Elizabethan Era is where we see a shift to a more defined culture.

Both monarchies share the same pageantry and all that though

>>32632123
>>32632373

You guys forgot about the Danes. They're the reason why feudalism was so lax in England.

>>32631735
χαρακτήρ means nature
δύναμις means ability
ισχύς means strength

None of those have the meaning of character/Karakter/charactère, power/Macht/pouvoir, and force/Kraft/force. They're just approximates that you use to translate Western concepts that you don't even possess.

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>>32631925
What the fuck, you're all over the place.

I didn't ask you to tell me who the institution that had churches built originally descended from. I asked you to open your eyes and tell me how the hell you think the sheer force expressed by light-flooded cathedrals stretched out into the infinite sky in any way relates to the square low interiorless Greek temples, or anything else in any other civilisation.

inb4 they both have pillars

>>32632216
>That seems unlikely, given the HRE was founded in 962...
it's an ongoing dispute, in case something is unclear. Some believe Charlemagne's crowning was the start of the Empire. As I see it, you believe Otto was the first emperor. The point is, Charlemagne's empire revived the "western Roman empire" and I count from that continuity.

>Romanesque art was born in France
We can surely say the Gothic art developed in France, Romanesque art was a Byzantine "transplant" all around Europe. The reason peop ejump that gun is because most Romanesque things today can be found preserved mostly in France and England (France more so).

>Really? Not Italy during the Renaissance?
Italy was not a country then. Very simple.

>>32632216
>800 AD - 925 AD
not sure if Charlemagne was French, German, both or neither. Also, Henry the Fowler recked Hungarians and shit.

>925 - 1190
But fight for Investiture was very important as well. Also German states participated in Crusades.

>>32632136
>The evolution of European plays (all being built on the previous):
>Greek - > Rome -> Italian -> Old French -> Elizabethan (Shakespeare)
>Our modern play is an evolved form of Greek plays. At the core, however, they share the same DNA.

Did you not even try to understand anything I just said?

Are you content to limit your understanding to parroting chronology as if it proved causality?

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DAILY REMINDER that no civilization will ever pass the Golden Age of Athens

Let's just face it. Post the classical era France has defined and refined every aspect of Western civilization.

>>32632148

>Western Civilization is by definition the result of Rome, Greece and Christianism.
No, it's by definition the civilisation that was born in Western Europe, to which neither Rome, Greece, nor early Christianity belong.

>What is this? History of Art?
It's history of civilisation, of which art is the purest and most telling expression. Other expressions like politics and science follow the same time periods.

>>32631925

>Early German civilization was like Greek civilization

Agreed with the rest of your post, but this made me kek hard. You should be ashamed of even comparing.

They (west germanics) didn't even play a role in the fall of Rome.

>>32632862

>But fight for Investiture was very important as well.
Only in that it weakened the HRE.

>Also German states participated in Crusades.
Only in a minor way at the start. There's a reason the Muslims called all Westerners "Franks".

>>32632923
Which wasn't so golden after all....
Much better than others though. Greeks had it better under dictators than "democrats". Sanitation, shipbuilding, monuments to Gods, plays and games, mostly endorsed by tyrants.

>>32633047
There were lots of contacts between Germans living in todays Germany and Romans, even though they weren't part of empire.

>>32632923
Nice Western painting you got there.

>>32633040

History of Art pls go.

>>32632466
>autistic German trying to teach Greek to a Greek
You guys are better when you're just asking them to pay their debts.

>>32633226
>>32633237
Contentless posts pls go.

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>>32633040
You have no understanding of the overall picture, you are like those know it all professors/teachers that have an answer already certain and will never EVER even accept any other view point.

Listen, Western Culture was BORN in Golden Age of Athens, Pic here >>32632923

Greek/Roman culture was a long decline after Athens fell to Sparta and then Makedon falling to Rome. Rome did not make a single improvement to Greek culture, they just copy/pasted it into mass production and that was the end of it.

Golden AGe of AThens if the Birth-place of BOTH West and East(Byzantine)

Golden Age of Athens was a slice of the Modern world in 400 BC. There were Modern education system, infrastructure, buildings, artwork, politics, theater, music, philosophy . .even the same Dillemas of the Modern West. . one of the biggest philosophy debates of Golden age Athens was how to avoid mass Materialism and go back to life of simplicity!

Everything we live in today was born in this 70-100 year period in 400 BC. EVERYTHING

>>32631729

No Byzantines, like for real? I don't think you can really label HRE as a country either. It wasn't unified enough to deserve that distinction.

>>32626494
>>32631729

Also to just sum up and place history in generalised categories like this is absurd, it doesn't address enough variables. The whole notion of this thread is ridiculous.

>>32632991
Do you know how frustrated I start to be when I think of what Spain could do, had they used those resources to refine society and move away from that warrior-feudal shit of society they had. Mark my words, France and Spain would be what the U.S and Soviet Union were few decades back, and all the way from 1500 till who knows when. The Spanish got a good start on Renaissance to capitalize on it, among exploration, high end military that buttraped most Europe and inflidels, the Habsburgs and excellent diplomacy, rule over Mediterranean. So many missed opportunities there.

>>32633202
It's called trading. Though almost always on Roman initiative.

>>32633355
The only Period the Byzies were ever busy in Western Europe was during the whole Italian Reconquest thing by Justinian.

For much of Byzantine History, the Empire was largely focused on (trying) to keep its hold over Eastern Europe/Mediterranean, beset by Slavs, Turkics, Italians, and Muslims on all sides.

>>32633368
The rise of America was inevitable though. Huge population, huge area, massive amounts of resources, huge industry, etc. No single European country could ever compete with that.

Same reason why the Netherlands, a great power at its height, was eventually completely overshadowed by the UK.

>>32633355
>No Byzantines, like for real?
Byzantine power base was in Asia. I did mention this is Europe only.

> I don't think you can really label HRE as a country either
Early Empire was much more centralized than the one later.

>It wasn't unified enough to deserve that distinction.
Bills, stamps, correspondence, law, title, military actions, all these prove there was in fact a country with that name and "distinction".
And since you're keen on reprimanding me for putting a decentralized country there, I sure hope you know the Empire had "circles", which coordinated joint military, diplomatic and economic missions. Those little fiefs didn't just float around with special privileges. Everything had the imperial stamp. Austria didn't beat back the Turks, Holy Roman Empire did.

>>32632466
>>32633278

Χαρακτήρ(ας) is the particular way one behaves.
Nature is Φύσις.
Ι am strong but powerless.
Είμαι δυνατός αλλά ανίσχυρος.
Ισχύς means fortitude (the ability to endure), not strength.
Δύναμις means physical/spiritual/mental ability, also political power

Lesson is over.

>They're just approximates that you use to translate Western concepts that you don't even possess.

Read the Odyssey and the Iliad. Read Hesiod.
Read something for fuck's sake.

>>32626494
I think you missed a few
3rd Reich (1933-1945)
birthplace: Germany
most powerful country: Germany (until 1944, Then USSR takes its place)

Cold war era (1945 - 1991)
birthplace: USSR
most powerful country: USSR/USA

Pax US (spoof on pax romana) (1991 - 2001)
birthplace: USA
most powerful country: USA

War on terrorism (2001 - present)
birthplace: Saudi Arabia (prince Osama Bin Laden)
most powerful country: USA

>>32633300
>You have no understanding of the overall picture, you are like those know it all professors/teachers that have an answer already certain and will never EVER even accept any other view point.
That's pretty ironic since you're just parroting "we Greco-Roman" Renaissance bullshit that everyone who never bothered to think about it believes.

>Golden Age of Athens was a slice of the Modern world in 400 BC. There were Modern education system, infrastructure, buildings, artwork, politics, theater, music, philosophy . .even the same Dillemas of the Modern West. . one of the biggest philosophy debates of Golden age Athens was how to avoid mass Materialism and go back to life of simplicity!
Yeah, like in EVERY FUCKING CIVILISATION EVER. Every civilisation eventually reaches its actual "civilisation" stage, urban, rationalistic, atheistic, and infertile, once intellectualism has defeated religion and money has defeated blood. It happened in India (that's where Buddha came in), it happened in China, it happened everywhere. What you've stumbled upon there is a common point of the development of every civilisation. Of course the West goes through the same thing just like it has gone through every other stage. But it wasn't because the Greeks (or the Indians, or the Chinese) had done it, just like the reason we did the Crusades wasn't because the Greeks had done the Trojan wars.

>>32633536
Nah, I just used possible Franco-Spanish relations to the more recent Soviet-American. The American rise is a wonder for itself.

That Spain fucked up. Kingdom of Sweden in those years pulled out of recession, a 3 million people kingdom and a frozen timber wasteland managed to feed its people properly, economically advance and beat back all its neighbours into submission. Surely one Spain would be able to do 5x times that.

>>32633355
All thinking uses categories. You just said thinking is absurd. Which I suppose is to be expected from an Australian.

OP, change po-mo to "contemporary" and I'll gladly agree with you.

>>32630641
>Chemistry
It's a bit more complicated than that. The word's path was something like Egyptian > Greek > Arabic > other languages. Claiming Greek influence due to the intermediate is silly.

I agree with the others being Greek, though.
>Why not use the words of the Western civilization you speak of? You know, the one that flourished AFTER everything Greek and Roman was dead.
I think I can answer that... to generate doublets with slightly different meanings.

>Why is scientific terminology STILL Greek?
Scientific terminology is a clusterfuck of a thousand languages. Example:
"E-pent-2-ene and Z-pent-2-ene are different substances, but both hydrolyze in aqueous environments to the same alcohol".
E- and Z-: German [entgegen, zusammen]
pent-, hydro-: Greek
alcohol: Arab
aqueous: Latin

>Why do you speak my language?
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT. You have as many claims for Classical Greek as Romance speakers have for Latin.

>>32633637
We're talking about ancient Greek, not modern.

>Read the Odyssey and the Iliad. Read Hesiod.
Maybe you should read some Western plays if you can't tell the difference.

>>32633753
Modern Greek is 50% ancient Greek words + 50% Byzantine Greek which was a simplified version of Ancient Greek

Read this if interested - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharevousa

>>32633685
I never liked this notion of Pax Americana. We all know what happened during that alleged "post WWII peace" with American society and its policies.

>>32633685
We don't enter a new historical era every 10 years just becomes America has a new enemy.

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>>32633864
laffed proper

>>32632123
Bloody Brits and their precious Channel

>>32633368
What went wrong with Spain? They build greatest empire, Habsburgs rule whole central Europe, but they still were able to fuck it up.

>>32633536
Yeah, they had unfair advantages like whole new continent, no historical baggage and lots of immigrants united under ideas of freedom, unity, capitalism etc.

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>>32626494

Bohemia ruled 13th century,until they killed our king ;_;

>>32633839
A language isn't just a vocabulary, and Greek evolved pretty much in the same fashion as Latin.

And even if Katharevousa was a natural descendant of Ancient Greek [it isn't - it's a planned dialect], it is NOT Ancient Greek by itself, in the same sense that a purist Spanish or Italian is NOT Latin.

>>32634024
are those two guys on horses fist bumping?

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>>32633864

>>32633529

He said Europe. >>32626494 This guy said Western Europe.

Either way I can't agree with you at all.

>For much of Byzantine History, the Empire was largely focused on (trying) to keep its hold over Eastern Europe/Mediterranean, beset by Slavs, Turkics, Italians, and Muslims on all sides.

That's a huge generalisation again, something this entire thread seems to be full of. The Byzantine Empire despite territorial loss, constant war and inept administrations had flourishes of re-emergence and absolute brilliance. Hell, just its window to the East and the Silk Road, always solidified it as a trading hub and therefore a superpower of the time (in a European sense). The wealth the Silk Road generated for the Byzantine's was so phenomenal that it carried over to the Turks when they finally applied the nail.

After Basil II died in 1025 the Byzantine Empire stretched from Armenia to Naples, they re-annexed Bulgaria, Crete, Antioch, Cyprus, Armenia and Georgia. It wasn't all 'constant warfare', the successes that occurred under Basil II and Leo VI were huge. He codified Byzantine Law, reformed the administration, established the Themes, brought the trading guilds to heel. Leo VI turned Constantinople into the capital of Europe, it had a population of 400, 000 for fuck sake. The only issue was that such wealth brought even more enemies and the empowered nobility became even more laurel bound when they needed to be standing, not forcing their subjects into serfdom. Their position would've been so secure if not for the Crusaders and their Latin Empire that they could have pushed back the Turk had they not been betrayed by Western Europe and the connection to the East would've supplanted Western European dominance. All the way until the colonial age and trading/colonies were established that crippled the Silk Road.

>>32633839
Katharevousa was a purist construction that didn't even survive. Modern Greek is the common vernacular which evolved naturally from Koine (literally Common)

>>32633843
And you also realize that Rome was constantly waging wars during the Pax Romana right? Same with the Pax Britannica

>>32633990
They controlled the fucking Low Countries, great part of Italy too. That's a shitload of revenue. They shit it up with over-taxing and being smug religious bastards. I simply don't understand how a country can fuck up so grand like Spain. Jesus fucking Christ... and it's like they gave up on military achievements after Rocroi and left their economy in the silver mines of south America. Triple less inovation that England for example and 10x times predispositions to achieve exactly the same as England, even more. Actually, everything economically invented by the brits could have bene invented by the Spanish years before. They had an estimate of 120 years to play with financial setups, but they decided to play "Religious camp - where we bully small protestant countries". I blame the clergy.

Same with Portugal. Clergy.


Fuck

>>32633368

I'm not really sure where you're trying to get to, but

>ruled the Mediterranean

Never happened. Not even in the western part.

Also, the main problem was precisely the inheritance of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon by a Burgundian Habsburg. It was not meant to happen, as he was like 4th or 5th in the line of succesion, but due to several offings, shit happened.

He was later also elected HR Emperor, and dragged Spain into dynastic foreign policy of imperial dreams and containment of France, policies that were nonsensical for Spain itself, commitments that Spain didn't need nor was of our interest. In addition, in spite of all his power he failed at absolutely fucking everything, from hammering France, to stop the turk advance, to quell or at least solve the protestant issue, to improve Spain proper, to modernize institutions... he was a fucking retard that left behind opened wounds in Europe that had a terrible influence in its historical development.

Phillip II tried to sort out part of this shit he inherited, but was caught up in too many fronts.

>>32631729
>Holy Roman Empire
>country

And the autism continues.
An enclave comprised by a fuckload of irrelevant and unrelated states = country
I've seen more serious threads on /pol/

>>32633753
>You have as many claims for Classical Greek
>>32634025
>>32634182

Study a bit the relation of Modern Greek with Ancient Greek. You'll be surprised. If I was transported in ancient Athens I could communicate with my ancestors. Could an American or a Londoner communicate with the tribes living in the geographic area of modern Britain at the time of Solon for example?

>to generate doublets with slightly different meanings
What does that mean?

>>32633827
Do you know what etymology is?

>>32633685
3rd Reich didn't lasted very long and wasn't so strong and historically relevant.
I think the rest is just continuation of American dominance (created after WW1 or WW2) against various states or organizations who tries to challenge it.

>>32634196
Some say the peace was good propaganda but I believe there was genuine time of peace. Pax Mongolica, Britannica are not peace times, that's for sure.

>>32634145

yeah , king of Austria and king Hungary. They united to stop Ottokar II when he was so close to seizing imperial throne ;_;

>>32634182
Read the wikipedia i linked

Katharevousa purist did not survive, but during the 80 year period it was the official language of Politics/News Media, it had become a part of Greek language fully

By the time Demotic(Common) Greek was made the official language in the 70's, Katharavousa had become apart of the common tongue.

Modern Greek is a combination of late 1800s common Greek + 1900's Katharavousa

>>32634327
>Study a bit the relation of Modern Greek with Ancient Greek. You'll be surprised. If I was transported in ancient Athens I could communicate with my ancestors. Could an American or a Londoner communicate with the tribes living in the geographic area of modern Britain at the time of Solon for example?
This might be worth a test. [Just for fun.]
Be right back.

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>>32634343
Tell that to the barbarians...

>not mentioning the Roman Empire

>>32633536

America happened because its rising and expansion went through totally unchecked.

Unlike what has always happened in Europe ( some country gets too strong so there's immediately a coalition of countries forming to balance power) America rose free of any counter-balance to its rising. Even more, it actually benefitted from European migration and trade.

America happened because Europe not only allowed by being oblivious but also encouraged it.

>>32626494
We defeated Spain in that era, where they were supposed to be the most powerful country. And we summoned a fleet twice the size of theirs.

The west was born during renaissance and died in the 1960s

>>32634360
While that's not wrong you're overestimating its influence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharevousa#Text_sample

>>32634280
So you're trying top put the blame on one man and his bastards? Trastamaras would fuck up the same. There is a whole class of lazy and shitty warrior duke leftovers from Reconquista that live an unsustainable way of life, looking to poach a real on extra taxes rather than innovate. Agricultural revolutions never made ground in Spain, middle class was stomped since forever (except in a few big cities) and feudalism was rampant.

>Not even in the western part.
Ottomans only had a strong grip on the eastern part. The rest was raids. Spain was the second titan in the Mediterranean.

>>32634327
>Do you know what etymology is?
It's a process through which words change spelling and meaning. Hope that helps.

>>32634455
>>32634574
It's incredible how many people still believe bullshit made up by 14th century Italians.

>>32634676
I gave you the etymology of the words you asked for. These are the original meanings.
If you don't know Greek then why bother?

>>32633541

>Byzantine power base was in Asia. I did mention this is Europe only.

I didn't know Constantinople was in Asia, thanks for the geography lesson. If you're going to say Europe only, cross out Spain and any colonial power for that matter.

>Early Empire was much more centralized than the one later.

True, around the 16th century it all came down. Either way, we'll have to agree to disagree on the rest, the HRE for all intents and purposes even prior to the 16th century was the most decentralised 'country' in Europe. The fact that there was no capital and upon almost each death and subsequent 'election' the 'capital' changed, suggests to me a complete lack of unity. Co-ordinations, diplomatic, military, economic or otherwise were for the most rather rare and never commanded the complete loyalty of all the robber barons the 'Empire' was full of. The constant civil wars and sponsoring of dissidents surpassed that of the Byzantine Empire on many an occasion. Not placing the Byzantine's in there for having holdings in Asia is absurd in comparison to placing the HRE there.

>>32633743

History isn't black and white is my argument, categorising it so simply into 'most powerful country' is repugnant, it glosses over too much.

>>32634511
Spain actually beaten itself. Shit economic situation due to religious wars, stretched fronts, loss of belief in Catholic defense in the Low Countries. Don't make it sound like you defeated them yourself. You had substantial aid from several countries which had the Spanish loss of Low Countries in their firm interest.

Phillip started a shit prepared campaign and decided not to finance it. The rest was a Dutch sweep. Meanwhile, France intervenes and the English see a stretched out Spain with strained economy. The only reason Netherlands remained independent is obvious, French undying aspirations and English trade.

>>32634772
You clearly know ancient Greek even less than me.

>>32634327
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1x6wMqlhmnT
I'm following roughly the Attic pronunciation for those... can you understand them just fine, or do they give you troubles?

[I'm just trying to "measure" how much Greek changed from then to now.]

Anyway. What I do know about Greek language's history is that pronunciation changed heavily: aspirated and voiced occlusives gave place to sibilants, diphtongs were simplified, the long vs. short vowel contrast was lost... so sorry if I take your claim with a bit of skepticism, but again, it's sounding to me like that guy in my class that said he could infer the Latin texts' meaning by Portuguese alone. [he couldn't.]

>>32634842
lol
You don't even know modern Greek.
Get the fuck out.

>>32626494
Ancient Finnish atlantian star empire 4 lyfe

>>32634775
>categorising it so simply into 'most powerful country' is repugnant
Right, you don't think one country is the most powerful? Everyone is a winner? If I ask you which is the most powerful country right now you wouldn't know the answer?

>>32634865
Write it down.

>>32634911
Luckily nobody here is talking about modern Greeks.

Maybe if you didn't get so emotionally invested in pretending you belong to a dead ancient civilisation that you actually have no relation to like American niggers pretending to be ancient Egyptians this thread wouldn't be making you so butthurt.

>>32634775
>History isn't black and white is my argument, categorising it so simply into 'most powerful country' is repugnant, it glosses over too much

Well you clearly have never studied history, all things must be categorized that's how we can understand them, and as nice as your idealistic notion of there not being a most powerful country, it's clearly wrong. There are obvious features of force projection and political influence of certain countries throughout history

>>32626494
How are you determining the birthplace of the Modern and Postmodern periods? I'm not sure why exactly France is considered the birthplace

>>32634327
By the same standards is Classical Greece considered a country. Also my friend speaks classical Greek but she wasn't able speak with modern Greeks and told me that their languages haven't very much in common (but I'm not expert in this area so I really don't know).

>>32634511
So did Vietnam.

>>32635005
>Write it down.
Then you don't understand the language; only its written rendering, specially because orthographies are far more conservative than the languages themselves.

[Can't you understand at least the second word?]

>>32635042
Sorry to but in, I agree on the categorization part, but the question of a most powerful country is extremely relative, especially as most Empires/Kingdoms were rather weak after a war (even if victorious) compared to other great powers of their time.

>>32634732

It's actually partly true. It's the mix between Germanic culture and laws (various invasions) and some roman heritage that built a country like France and some others.

>>32635106
Modern: French Revolution, that one is pretty non-controversial.
Postmodern: see >>32627400

>>32634648

Trastamaras were fucking based. Feudalism was over by this time in Spain, they managed to hold a grip on the high nobility and cities and the general economy were flourishing. The left over warring class of the war of Granada was what created the Tercio system and pwned the French in Italy first and then conqueredAmerica for golds. The natural course should have been not to merge with Burgundy-Habsburgs, focus on the Mediterranean (vs the Ottomans) and the New World for the prosperity of Spain, keep Italy as influence zone making a deal with France (after all Castile had never been an enemy of France before Habsburgs) in exchange for giving zero fucks about w/e France conquering desires over Flanders/Burgundy/German clay.

>Spain ruled over the western mediterranean.

Berbery raids, not just Ottomans, were very frequent during Charles the Fucking Plague reign. The situation improved a lot during Phillip II, but still...

>>32634775
>le Constantinople
Let's avoid the Balkans were the most backward and poor/poorly inhabited hilly place,except Athens and its surroundings and let's also forget that everyone at that point in history wanted to own Asia Minor, something Byzantines held since there is such a country. Constantinople could fund all the wars, right? It was the fix for all Byzantine problems. Just see Constantinople for reference of Byzantine power!. That surely helped them in 1450es, right!

And that same Constantinople had the Asian part, which was more densely populated as well.

> If you're going to say Europe only, cross out Spain and any colonial power for that matter.
Yes, because Spain utilized Mapuches to fight their wars around Europe. Surely, these colonials were a rich source of Spanish power.
Spain is included because Spanish power was concentrated in Spain. Saying anything else is milestone retarded. No silver Mexican mines changed Spanish religious views, society, culture, they actually sped up its downfall.

Byzantines for example, were an eternal sponge of the east, absorbing, and influencing the west. Like a filter. And their power was drawn from Asia Minor.

>History isn't black and white is my argument, categorising it so simply into 'most powerful country' is repugnant, it glosses over too much.
This is history. If you are too afraid to categorize and think in shelves/borders to easily absorb, you're not fit to discuss it. Stay impartial and indifferent then. Everything you see around history today is ego. Best, worst, most competitive, most efficient, most religious, least religious, richest, poorest, military logistics. Measurement is requirement. Saying clicheic shit like "History is not black and white!!" doesn't give you anything over this conversation. You just sad an empty sentence utilized by everyone. Might as well finish it by saying "Love is blind" or some other used and abused sentence.

>>32635137
Even if you believe in this painfully causalistic view of history, Western civilisation was still born out of the combination of those things, which happened exactly when the periods in the OP begin. Not in Roman times, and not in the Renaissance.

Though like I said, Greco-Roman influence (like all influence from foreign civilisation) was superficial at best. Once you strip away the names and artifice, you'd be hard pressed to find two civilisations with more different souls.

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>>32635214
>giving zero fucks about w/e France conquering desires over Flanders/Burgundy/German clay.

>>32635324

>painfully causalistic view of history

It's as simplistic as I can make it. Of course I will not write you a book about the lex romana burgondium or whatever.

I'm just pointing out that there were an influence.

I've never disagree with you on the period.

>>32635033
>belong to a dead ancient civilisation that you actually have no relation to

But I do.
I speak the same language and have the same alphabet.
Do those niggers you mentioned speak the same language and have the same alphabet with the ancient Egyptians?
You really sound jelly as fuck.
Sadly, all ancient civilizations are dead. That's why they are called ancient you fucking mongoloid.

>>32635119
Perhaps I simply cannot understand you.
What makes you think that you're pronouncing the words correctly?
Ancient Greeks used a different tone system than we do today.
They spoke melodically.

>>32635182
Okay thanks. But wouldn't you say the post 1945 period was constructed by USA/USSR? I mean, it just seems a bit strange to flit back and forth between Era's being a product of military supremacy and era's being a product of philosophical schools of thought.

>>32634156
>1000's
You do know that century ended in utter disaster for the Byzantines right?

From then on out until the 1400's, Byzantine history consists of tragedies and recoveries by talented leaders that prolonged its existence.

That said. It didn't hold much Hegemony over the affairs of Europe the likes of rampaging French/German/Papal politics ever did, as it was busy maintaining their own hold in the East.

>>32634915
To be fair, the concept of Superpowers is fairly modern, brought about by industrialization.

For much of the world back in the 1-1800's, there was no sole power, just a bunch of really influential states.

Take East Asia for example. China is often considered "most powerful" but Japan and to some extent, Korea can hold their own.

It's as silly as the Great Man narrative in history

Islamic Europe Golden Era (Now - ?)
Birthplace: France
Most powerful country: Nouveau Algérie (France)

>>32635374
Well, he's sorta right, Spain already controlled Italy, they were too busy with the Ottomans to afford to defend the Flanders. Not like France could do much at that time.

>>32635033
Modern Greek culture/language/religion is rooted in Byzantine Greece

And Byzantine Greece had its roots in Ancient Greece so there is a connection linguistically/culturally/genetically

Egyptians have no such connection, language/culture/genetic . .nothing

You are starting to sound ignorant and defensivce

>>32635374

Yes, that was too late then, in times of Phillip II.

But I'm talking before the Habsburg (by fucking rebound) arrival, the times of Isabel and Fernando. The Heir Apparent, Juan, died an infant, the second heir apparent, Miguel, (which would have meant Union with Portugal) also died at a early age. Then there was another one.

Only by 4th rebound did Charles inherited the Crowns and everything went to the shitter.

>>32635581
>Nouveau Algérie

At least try to banter in correct French

>>32635374

Btw, the Duke of Alba was m8 with the Valois King. They were plotting removing protestant together, but William of Orange was hiding behind a tree, listening to this rightful based catholic conversation. :3

>>32634915

>Right, you don't think one country is the most powerful? Everyone is a winner?

It doesn't work like that, how did England crush France for almost eighty straight years in the Hundred Years War despite having a smaller economy, a civil war, plague, a smaller army and logistical issues? The main reason is they won some lucky battles, capitalising on small advantages they had available to them, I get that they didn't win the war. However, they embarrassed and humiliated France for eighty years a country that you consider to be the 'most powerful' during that period.

How did the Netherlands achieve independence against a country that had the tercio, huge colonial possessions, a larger fleet, endless rivers of silver and gold and not to mention the backing of the Holy Roman Emperor. History is full of stories like this, countries that should've lost to these 'most powerful' countries.

You can't just say most powerful or most influential, it's not that black and white.

>If I ask you which is the most powerful country right now you wouldn't know the answer?

Great example mate. Let's see the American's invade Russia and China, see how well it goes.

>>32635042

>Well you clearly have never studied history, all things must be categorized that's how we can understand them, and as nice as your idealistic notion of there not being a most powerful country, it's clearly wrong. There are obvious features of force projection and political influence of certain countries throughout history

Sorry, you can't just categorise a country as 'most powerful' in my opinion, it doesn't take into consideration enough variables.

>>32635615
Charles wasn't a bad ruler, but he made a lot of mistakes. The biggest is not to have created an independant burgundian kingdom. But at the end of his life he was depressed and he feared the evolution of protestantism in Burgundy (his native country after all). Spain (Castille) was the strongest part of its empire and he entrusted his son to protect Burgundy from protestantism. If you take it that way, then Spanish at least, half-succeeded

>>32635488
I have a bit of background on classical languages, and while my main focus is Latin and not Attic Greek, I'm almost sure I pronounced them understandably. I even exaggerated some pronunciations.
(Maybe I messed with the long vs. short vowel distinction, but then, I don't think modern Greek speakers in general would differentiate them either...]

The words were:
φοῖνιξ (phoenix),
και (and),
μαχανα (device/machine),
Κρόνος (Cronus = Zeus' father),
Χρόνος (Chronos = the Time),
πλακοῦς (a kind of pizza-like flat bread)

Differences worth mentioning:
*you most probably pronounce Φ/Θ/Χ as Fill, THink and loCH; Attic speakers would pronounce them as Pill, Till and Kill, and differentiate those from Π/Τ/Κ (sPill, sTill, sKill) by the aspiration;
*αι and οι for you probably sound as "bEd" and "fEEl", while they would pronounce them as "bY" and "bOY";
*μπ/ντ were always pronounced "hard", mp/nt; for you, they're either b/d or mb/nd;
et cetera.

TL;DR: as much as your language is indeed descendent of "the old" Greek, it isn't the same, but something different.

>>32635581
...well at least we're the most powerful country :')

>>32635676
I don't know frogspeak, I just used google translate

>>32635858
google translate a shit


Well : Nouvelle-Algérie (for future banter occasions)

>>32635776
All those words are used in modern greek also

I think the difference between Modern Greek and Ancient Greek is like the difference between Modern American and Shakespearen English

I remember in high school we were given pieces of text of shakespeares play in how he wrote it and the entire class was struggling with it.

Basically same vocabulary, but different rules of language that had evolved over time to make it simpler to understand

>>32635886
cheers anon, what kind of pleb shitshow is google running here

>>32635042
>all things must be categorized that's how we can understand them

History's Social Science though.

Which means that shit is close to impossible and, not to mention, also idealistic.

Just look up using European Historic terms on, say, other civilizations.
>Medieval China/Japan
They were in the middle of what? As far as they were concerned, their interpretation of history is cyclical and their civilization is forever.
So the best way to name their periods in history is through local terms (Dynasties in China, Periods/Reign Era's/Shogunates for Japan).

Or the Industrial Age. Industrial for Europe, while the rest of the world is playing catch up even until now.

Shit's impossible to categorize.

>>32635952
Google translation can't into genders

so progressive

Algérie is feminine in french

>>32635582
The French officially rescinded their claims few decades before the Eight Years' War if my memory serves me. That's why I said it was an "undying aspiration". To own Low Countries that is. I don't know how much "smart" that was, but they did get that territory easy, by succession. Still, it was valuable, as much as Italian Spain.

And France did have its own religious AND noble shit which was backed and orchestrated by foreign powers to take care off as well. That's why we can easily say "France couldn't do much..."

>>32635719
Can't stem the Villem!


>>32635615
I'm focused on period after Habsburg ascension, though. When Spain inherited Low Countries

>>32635766

Why on earth would he create an independent Burgundian kingdom? And why on earth should Spain entrust his moneys and men to defend the Burgundian/Habsburg clay from France?

Because Imperial policy gonna Imperial.

And that's why I'm pointing our that Castile-Aragon merging with Burgundy-Habsburg was a complete nonsensical disgrace for Spain's interests.

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>>32635587
You need only consider the alphabet.
I use today the same alphabet my ancestors used more than 2000 years ago.
[pic related]

>>32635776
You should have told me you were going to say a few words at random.
I understood
Phoenix although you pronounced it Khoenix
Kronos
Chronos
They sound pretty much the same in modern Greek.
Why plAkous though? You've written plakOUs (πλακοῦς)

Here's the modern version
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1yqceDIIN4A

>>32635488
>thinks he's ancient Greek
>calls anyone a mongoloid

>>32635508
I don't, the birthplace part is always cultural/intellectual, the most powerful country part describes politics.

>>32635996
Interesting, is Australia masculine?

>>32635534
>To be fair, the concept of Superpowers is fairly modern, brought about by industrialization.
Only the word is new. The Habsburg Empire was most definitely a superpower, as was France from Westphalia to Vienna. I don't really see how it relates to industrialisation.

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>>32636129
This Greek's ancestors have been living in the land of Hellas for 10,000 years

Does he look mongoloid to you Hans Gruber?

Countless Genetic studies have been done in Europe. Do you want to know the #1 thing that is found almost common in every single one?

Modern Peoples of all of Europe, have almost across the board live in the same local regions their ancient ancestors do. Ofcourse, not everyone(Slavs for example), but for most part this is the most common finding

>>32635996
>>32636180
What about Funland? (we call it Suomi Neito in Finnish, which means Finland/Finnish maiden)

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>>32636129
>>32636250

>>32636213
Superpower technically means continuous global power projection i.e. US, USSR and perhaps the colonial empires.

>>32635587
>Modern Greek culture/language/religion is rooted in Byzantine Greece
Yes.
>And Byzantine Greece had its roots in Ancient Greece
No not really.

Ancient Greek and Eastern (including Byzantine) civilisations are completely unrelated.

>>32636110
And Haitians and Malians speak French. I'm sure one day they will be shitposting out of butthurt whenever someone insults their French ancestors.

>>32636180
No, feminine
So is France

>>32636273
So is finland (Finlande)

In fact msot of the countries are feminine in french EXEPT for:
Mexico - Denmark - Japan - Wales - Kosovo (in b4 >coutnty) - Brazil - Venezuela - Panama - Peru - Chile - Canada- netherlands (masculine plural)

All the rest is feminine (pretty much)

>>32636333
Is there a particular reason for a country being masculine or feminine?

>>32636250
>muh hurritage

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>>32636327
Do Haitians and French cluster together on Genetic studies? No.

Do Modern Greeks and Southern Italians cluster in every single Genetic study done? Yes.

Who colonized South Italy? Ancient Greeks . .

You are starting to sound like an idiot Hans . . please evaluate your misconceptions

>>32636369
Informative and persuasive post

>>32636333
>>32636366
Propably just traditions lost to time (We call Finland "the fatherland" but we still refer to it as a maiden, and I have no idea why that is, opposed to say the russians calling Rossiya the motherland)

>>32636213
>The Habsburg Empire was most definitely a superpower, as was France from Westphalia to Vienna.

And yet, The Kingdom France had their own shit going on and was equally powerful too.

Not to mention the Ottomans habitually threatening the Habsburgs and thwarting their ambitions in Eastern Europe.

Hell, the Habsburgs had trouble handling their own "Empire" of disparate states.

>>32636366
Not that I know, no.

It's just random, just like most of the inanimate objects and shit which have a gender in french (table, car, chair, mouse are feminine / autobus, floor, bed, computer are masculine)

>>32635941
Your analogy with Shakespearean English is correct, but now imagine that, instead of 500 years of difference, you had 2400. It's more or less the time between Attic Greek and modern Greek.

And odds are the texts sounded "weird" for the ones who managed to decipher them in your class... (ex: "pass" and "was" was a legitimate rhyme for the bard, but not for you guys.)

>Basically same vocabulary, but different rules of language that had evolved over time to make it simpler to understand
Not necessarily simpler, but different. "Evolution" in the same sense as in Biology.

Also, take in mind, you can replace Shakesperean and modern English with Romance languages and Latin and the example still holds true; we still use the old Latin words as "caballus", "aedes", "uagina", "auricula"... yet, nobody see the Romance languages as "still Latin", since they got different names.

>>32636417
Too dumb to get it?

You like other Americans think only genetics matter and just having one ancestor who was part of a culture makes you part of the same culture. You don't even know the difference between race and culture.

>>32636439
The gender thing has always seemed like a barrier for me to learn another language

Guess it's not a problem when you grow up with it

>>32636366
not really most of them are feminine a few are masculine like japon, luxembourg or brazil and some have no gender like netherland monaco or haiti

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Enough for tonight. Good night, sweet people. :3

>>32636327

>Ancient Greek and Byzantine civilizations are completely unrelated.

Why do krauts have this colossal butthurt with Greece, that even reaches the deepest grounds of maximum absolute ridicule?

Is it because of the pay denbts thing?

Kek

Krauts gonna kraut.

>>32636110
>You should have told me you were going to say a few words at random.
My bad. Words without a context are harder to get, I should indeed.

Plakous: I erred the stress syllable, but it's another thing that changed [their stress was tonal, not syllable-based like now]
Phoenix: I pronounced it with the same consonant as "pill". Like in Attic Greek.

Now comparing your recording, how the old folks would try to spell what you're saying:
κη
μαἑνα
Κρόνος [this one would be the same]
Ῥόνος

For "phoenix", I don't know how they would represent the first consonant, the sound was "exotic" for them. Maybe they would understand it as an "σ", much like the Athenians did with Spartan "θ". In this case, it would be something like "σíνιξ".

>>32636510
>>Guess it's not a problem when you grow up with it

yeah exactly

Now that I'm learning russian (which have 3 genders) I don't find it very difficult, objects have genders, now that I'm used to it...

But yeah, for an english speaker it must be scary, it really is easy though once you get the vocabulary (you just have to learn the gender with the word)

>>32635228

Look if you're going to adopt such an isolationist arbitrary view regarding the Byzantine's and then argue in favour of the Holy Roman Empire at a clean reference point (for you sake) of around 457-1000AD, I don't think we have much more to discuss.

Furthermore, to discredit the reliance that Spain placed upon her colonies in comparison to the Byzantine's reliance on Asia Minor is confusing to me too. Mexican silver mines did a lot to influence Spain in both her rise and her downfall and to consider the colonies not a sponge for Spain confuses me even more-so. My point is if you're going to adopt such a retarded and yes 'black and white' view of history, categorising it into something as simple as 'most powerful' is offensive to the whole notion of history and the study of it. I don't shy away from categorising something, especially history. My only point is calling something 'most powerful and most influential' is fucking absurd. Also, love is blind.

>>32635534

Was only using 1220's as a reference point, a time when they were in the most wars they had ever been in. I understand how it ended and up until the second crusade the Byzantine's greatly influenced Europe, in particular Papal politics, so much so that a crusade was commissioned to bring them down.

Anyways, this 'interesting thread' is fucking stupid and is beyond arbitrary in its quasi-historical analysis of Europe.

>>32636327
>Ancient Greek and Eastern (including Byzantine) civilisations are completely unrelated.

This idiot keeps shitting all over the thread.
The lingua franca in the East Roman Empire was Greek. The official language of the Orthodox Church was Greek.
Scholars in the East Roman Empire spoke and wrote Greek.
The Stoics, Plotinus, Socrates, and the Neo-Platonists were highly regarded in Byzantium and heavily influenced many Fathers of the Orthodox church.
You need to stop huffing glue m8.

>>32636545
>make thread that doesn't even mention Greece
>Greek turns up and starts crying like a toddler
>fellow PIGS joins in and starts crying about Germany

Yes I'm definitely the butthurt one here.

>>32636508
>think only genetics matter and just having one ancestor

But as he pointed out, almost all the Greek ancestry has stayed in the same place since prehistory

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>>32636644
Germans do not care about facts

They have a set in stone mindset/ideology, trying to convince him with facts will just make the German angrier

>>32636644
Yes and Haitians speak French, and clearly Nigerians are the heirs of Shakespeare.

Language doesn't mean shit you colossal faggot. Ancient Greece and Byzantines couldn't possibly be more different in every single way that matters.

>>32636672
>literally still doesn't understand the difference between culture and race after I just explained it

No hope here.

>>32626494
France, Germany and the low countries didn't exist before louis the pious died

>>32636649

>m-muh Heiliges Roman Clusterfuck of relevance

XDDDD

>>32626494
OP, I think we can agree that without lube the bulbous hilt of that sword will still fit in the girl's anus. All it needs is a good shove.

>>32635676
But I don't know any Arabic

>>32636786
>still crying about Germany despite it having nothing to do with anything

Look I'll ask Merkel to use more lube next time, ok?

>>32636584
Thank you for this.
I very much enjoyed listening to your pronunciation, and I appreciate your input.
I wish you success in your studies, you sure look passionate enough to have it.

>>32636726
>Language doesn't mean shit

Take a load of this faggot.

>>32636753
Pretty much nobody is culturally the same as in ancient times.

>>32636840
You're welcome, mate. [Just take my pronunciations with a grain of salt because, as yourself implied, they might have a heavy accent.]

And thank you, both for wishing me success and giving me some modern Greek pronunciation to compare with the old ones [spoiler]:D[/spoiler]

>>32636812
>wanting to shove swords into Marion Maréchal Lepen

Shit dude what are you doing

>>32636858
So you're saying that dead civilisations are dead. An astute point, but one that seems to escape some of these posters.

>>32636753
Yes they're different, but I'm not bothered by a modern Greek saying he's the same people as the ancients. It's the same population pool, with drastic changes over time in culture. The guy you talk to from Greece might consider the population part more important. It's all opinions.

I'm not one to judge other cultures though

>>32636890
I was going to take it out and smell it later.

and not the sharp part of course! It's all about spreading awareness....

>>32629471
You missed the Mesopotamians/Babylonians/Persians.

You also skipped over China and India's separate development from the western world.

>>32636920
I think Civilizations evolve, NOT die

There IS a difference Hans Gruber

For example, Thracian Civilization which existed same time as ANcient Greece IS dead, and replaced by South Slavs

Ancient Greek civilization evolved from a poly-theistic culture to a mono-theistic culture but still keeping many elements such as language, food, lifestyle, philosophy, litereature, genetics, etc

There is a difference between an evolution of culture and a complete "dead" culture. Just because cultures change doesnot mean the previous one is completely dead .. or am I completely wrong here?

>>32636993
Half of China's "history" is actually mythical, but the government endorses it because hey why not?

Yeah, that probably happened, so lets just say that it did.

>>32636983
We're specifically talking about civilisations here, not gene pool.

>>32637039
Chinks wouldn't know culture if the Mona Lisa took a shit on their collective faces

>>32637023
Easter Island civilization died.

and no, it's not because they didn't have enough kids, it's because their civilization couldn't support the kids they did have. Big difference, but certain people like to hide those details.

>>32637023
Even the most conservatice of modern cultures are a farcry from their predecessor of 2000 years. They might share many similarities when closely inspected, but thanks to all the changes to life we have made in the past 150 years thanks to electricity, computers, the internet etc. no modern culture is (in my books, it's all up to interpretation) close enough to their ancient counterpart to be called the same.

>>32637071
Is that considered classy nao?

I buy six lah

>>32636920

>Not understanding the concept of evolution for cultures and civilization
>Black oder white, keine Grey bitte!!!1! meine kraut head kann nicht into comprehend tonalities!!

Every time.

>>32637023
If you study history you realise all civilisations have very similar histories and go through the same stages. They awaken, they blossom (over a span of about a thousand years), then they harden, until eventually something comes along and breaks them. But throughout their lives they always retain the same soul (a unique perception of space and time), which is expressed in their religion, art styles, science, mathematics, politics. If a people adopt a new religion (and I mean new in its essentials, not just a reform like Protestantism or Islam), they have joined a new civilisation. Ancient Greek civilisation died with its gods.

>>32637150
fair enough

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>>32636726
>Language doesn't mean shit
u wot? Language is one of the main grounds culture is based. SPECIALLY IN THE OLD WORLD.

>Ancient Greece and Byzantines couldn't possibly be more different in every single way that matters.
Now, while they weren't the same, there is clearly a cultural continuation of one into another. Not only in language, but in things like the religious decentralization (guess what the Schism was about!), Byzantine architecture being clearly built upon Ancient architectural concepts (plus some new toys as the abode), even the art clearly follows.

>>32637161
Just make your own thread about how much you hate Germany if it's that painful, or maybe punch a pillow I don't know.

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>>32637316
Fair enough bro, I can see your point about the "soul" being based in religion.

Anyway, what do you think will usher in the next great European civilization?

My prediction is Islamic Turk-roach/Arab/african uprising in Europe that will create a new European super-state civilization

>>32637421
meant for >>32637279

>>32637279
Things aren't as clear-cut as that. Using the very Greeks as an example: the Greek culture wasn't simply "wiped out" with the Macedonian and then Roman rule, instead it persisted, with some old elements leaving and new cultural elements arriving gradually.

Cultures - and by extension, civilizations - evolve pretty much in the same fashion as species. We "cut" them here and there, like OP [you?] did with the periods of Western history; but those are still arbitrary and for convenience, when reality is always gradual.

>>32637515
Why would the Macedonians "wipe out" Greekculture?

The Macedonians were Greek Ultra-Nationalist and Alexander the Great was basically the Greek Hitler.

Makedon had been a Greek civilization for hundreds of years prior to conquering the weak Athens.

Death of Alexander the Great to Fall of Makedon is known as "The Greek Age"

>>32637298
Language has nothing to do with civilisations. Basques don't even speak an Indo-European language, but they're Western. Kurds do but aren't.

And no there is no continuation, the break is very obvious. The religions couldn't be more different, one had gods who were physical beings with limited powers, the other has a single god who represents good in an eternal war against evil within a closed cosmos ruled by magic. One's architecture consisted in rectilinear objects on pillars while the other used rounded arches and domes. One's art consisted in reliefs and statues while the other's in icons and arabesque. That shift is almost sudden, seemingly out of nowhere in the Roman Empire which until then was still following Classical Greek motives. Suddenly monotheistic religions spread, temples were built with domes, and statues lost their realism and got those huge eyes. A new civilisation was born, in the Near East where all those things were coming from.

>>32637560
Oh man, the relationship between Macedonians and Greeks would yield at least a thousand papers... some people claim they were Greeks, some claim they were just influenced by Greeks...
[I think they're "sister branches", but my opinion has no weight in this regard.]

Regardless. My point is more, like:

We usually set the end of the Ancient Greek period by Phillip II conquering them; but the culture didn't cease to exist. With Roman rule, lots of the culture were gradually changed, but most of it still remained; in the ERE times, ditto; then Ottoman rule; then modern days. There is no "dividing line", except the ones we put there for, again, our own convenience.

>>32637421
Russia. The Russian soul has been struggling to awaken for centuries now.

>>32637515
Some leftover glow of dead civilisations probably always still remains, but civilisations can still be considered separate from each other. Some residual Greco-Roman influence may remain in Southern Europe, but it doesn't make the essence of Western civilisation any more Greco-Roman.

>>32637515
What about democracy?

We still make stories about Greek gods even though no one believes them....I think that matters, it counts as survival in some form.

Even decimated cultures like the Incas survived, they gave us potatoes

>>32632769

What I'm saying is that you didn't go from tribalism to that Cathedral.

You would have never built a Cathedral like that for Odin.

>>32633047

What I mean is that Greeks got the best ideas from the East.

Germans got the best ideas from the south.

Both Greek and German civilization didn't just materialize out of thin air.

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>>32637814
Could you define "civilization"? Maybe we're calling different things by the same name, since for me, language is part of a civilization. [Not the whole... only a part].

>The religions [...]
The religions _look_ different, but they have lots of common grounds.

For lots of Christians, God _is_ a physical being as well as spiritual, since it incarnated as Jesus; for others, Jesus is the son of a God, in the same fashion as Herakles and other heroes.

Greek gods aren't directly comparable to the Christian god Yahweh, but they are to the saints, common in both Orthodox and Roman branches.

Even the very Schism can be related to differences in Roman and Greek polytheism and societies, where one is used to one central unquestionable divine authority [like the pope] and the other to a decentralized system [like the Patriarchs].

Byzantines didn't stop using pillars, pic related. The lack of rounded arches and domes in Ancient architecture was due to the old techniques not allowing those; the shift in this regard was caused by the Romans and their architectural revolution, not civilization shift.

You're calling a ~300 years long period "sudden".

>>32627622
Ancient civilization wasn't "Western", it was Mediterranean. This is a very important difference. Some of it's most important centers, like Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria stand today outside the "Western" world.

We can't talk about Western civilization before this event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Pepin

This is the beginning of Western civilization. Before that there was the Meditarranean, even when the Germans invaded the Roman Empire and assimilated into Christianity, they never expanded Christian civilization into Central and Eastern Europe because they didn't feel like they needed to do it. They want to share the wealth of Meditarranean civilization, not to destroy it. It's also important to remember that during this period of Late Antiquity the Papacy was merely a vassal of the Emperor in Constantinople, further reinforcing the effective union of the Mediterranean civilization.

What broke that? The Muslim conquests. When Arab armies invaded and conquered the whole Eastern and Southern Mediterranean, the unity of it's civilization was lost, then the Byzantines went full retard with Iconoclasm and the links between Constantinople and Rome were severed. The Pope proposed an alliance with the Frankish king instead and Western civilization as we know it was born.

>>32637298

Those are pics of wealthy people from Egypt

>>32637902
>Some residual Greco-Roman influence may remain in Southern Europe
Jesus Christ what the fuck am I reading

>>32637814

Germanics got the concepts of buildings, writing, and administration from the Romans.

The only difference is that you made changes in your buildings, you put spaces between words, and you elected your emperor.

Dukes, counts, farming techniques, the church, the management of villages, cities, and fortresses all came from the Romans.

Changing the facade and adding new elements doesn't constitute a "break".

Quit being delusional.

>>32637902
Focus on
>can still be considered separate from each other
In the same fashion that we "can consider" Soviet Russia and modern Russia separated "civilizations". And still, the culture goes on from one to another.

>>32637985
>What about democracy?
Democracy was one of the elements of the culture; it survived, specially in the Roman concept of res publica ["public thing"], but in the original sense, it died and was "resurrected" recently.

Fair point about the gods; they didn't survive as a religion proper, though.

Incas are trickier... I'd say their culture is for all purposes extinct, except some clusters of Quechua speakers and maybe some art, but the rest is Spanishfied as fuck.

>>32638365
_Which_ Egypt?

>>32638472

Under Rome but the people in Fayum wouldn't have been mixing with Romans

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>>32638303
Oh, a important and often relegated issue was the work of Irish and Anglo-saxon missionaires in mainland Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-Scottish_mission

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_mission

As i said. The conversion of Germanics to Christianity was just a way for them to assimilate to Roman culture, they didn't went further than their own elites and the mass of rural people remained largely pagan (the very word pagan is a remind of that). This is also why the map of the spread of Christianity by 600 is basically identical to the map of the Roman Empire.

With one difference. Ireland. And with the zeal of recent converts they went to proselytize in the mainland (later joined by also recent Anglo-saxon converts), not only among the Germanic nobles, but with the common people. It was them, the Irish and the English that exposed the masses of the Frankish realm and Germania to Christianity and made them part of a shared civilization with the Mediterranean Christians. Without this basis i don't know how Christendom could have survived the Muslim conquests and expanded to the East with Charlemagne.

>>32638472
So food doesn't count as a bastion of culture?

Interesting.

>>32638126
Who said that? But we also wouldn't have built it for Jupiter.

>Both Greek and German civilization didn't just materialize out of thin air.
That's actually pretty close to what happened.

I know people nowadays are obsessed with causality and think everything has to be just based on something else, but at some points humans do create something original.

What happens when a civilisation is born is far more than just an addition of influences, it's a collective realisation on a deeply spiritual level, the awakening of a soul. It's inward, not outward. And I think it has most to do with geography.

The Greek soul was that of stony islands under the midday sun. It sees the world as a collection of defined bodies, reduced to their superficial existence. That is the soul of Greek gods, of the Doric column, of marble nudes, of the Greek play, of the city-state, of Euclidean geometry, of the elements, even of Plato's ideas.

The Eastern soul is that of a desert peninsula, like a cave. It sees the world as closed both in time and space, and a magic battlefield between good and evil. That is the soul of Judaism, Eastern Christianity, Mazdeism, Manichaeism, and Islam, of the dome and arch, of icons surrounded in gold and arabesque, of the caliphate and the ghetto, of algebra, of alchemy, of the debate over the substance of Christ.

The Western soul is that of a forest of high oaks rustled by the wind. It sees the world as eternal infinite space and pure force. That is the soul of Catholicism, of the Gothic cathedral, of perspective in paintings, of polyphony in music, of the Western character, of the dynastic state, of calculus, of Western physics, of the question of free will.

>>32638514
So. In other words: Coptic Egypt, Hellenized as fuck from Alexander until the Muslim conquest.

>>32638303
>>32638602
Nice historical background, seriously.

>>32638647
Well... it does, and they still eat cuy con papas and drink chicha morada.
[With apples. From the Old World.]

>>32638679

Not ethnic Greek though. Even if they were Hellenized

>>32638781
Still nice as an example heavily related to the Greek culture at those times. I posted those because they resemble a lot Byzantine paintings, "hinting" the continuation of the culture.

>>32638812

Okay I just saw the picture from the front page and posted

>>32638303
Seriously this. Stop trying to pigeonhole Mediterranean civilizations, even today.

>>32638661
>The Western soul is that of a forest of high oaks rustled by the wind. It sees the world as eternal infinite space and pure force. That is the soul of Catholicism, of the Gothic cathedral, of perspective in paintings, of polyphony in music, of the Western character, of the dynastic state, of calculus, of Western physics, of the question of free will.

I'm pretty sure half of that stuff has its roots with the Greeks and Romans.

>>32638221
Civilisations are cultural realms that share the essentials of common religion, common styles, a common history. They're a kind of complex organism.

>but they are to the saints
You don't see the difference? Jesus and the saints are long dead, they are worshiped as immaterial beings, and all of them are just intermediaries to the one single God. Greek gods were actual physical entities, they supposedly looked like really huge people (although they could change shapes), and the main ones literally lived on Mount Olympus.

The schism is the birth of Catholicism as a purely Western religion, adapted do the nascent Western culture.

>You're calling a ~300 years long period "sudden".
Hellenic culture had stood more or less still for over 500 years. So yes the appearance of all that new stuff was sudden.

>>32638843
I think he isn't trying to "pidgeonhole", but just set an arbitrary beginning in a meaningful event, much like OP did...

>>32638303

That's an interesting point of view, but I'd argue that Mediterranean civilization was essentialy the Western Civilization. The core and birthplace because of Greece, Rome and Christianism.

Part of it ceased to be eventually because of Islam.

>>32638446
Picking up superficial elements from foreign civilisations and twisting them into new shapes to fit different needs doesn't constitute belonging to that foreign civilisation.

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>>32638762
We all might as well admit that culture as we seem to like to think of it is kind of an anachronism. Even in weirdo-places like Saudi Arabia you have tent covered wives wearing French lingerie once they get home and drinking Coca-Cola while they watch pirated Bollywood movies.

We have a global corporate culture now that is a little more this in one country and a little more that in others but overall the same. I think this is a good thing actually. Think of the most iconic Italian food you know, was it commonly eaten in 1200 AD?

Cuba and Best Corea might be exceptions

>>32638928
Western civilization is Greek rationalism, Roman law and Christian religion.

Don't underestimate the last part. It came later, but it offered a synthesis between the first ones that didn't really exist beforehand.

>>32638928
Well you're pretty wrong.

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>>32638762

>>32638472
>we "can consider" Soviet Russia and modern Russia separated "civilizations".
What? No.

>>32639040
If that was the case there would be no difference between us and Greece/Byzantines.

>>32639088
What about Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and modern Putin-State?

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>>32639033
I know this is a difficult position for me to defend because it's mostly based on opinion. To me, the lost of such a huge part of the original civilization and the whole reorientation that happened subsequently, from a North-South sea based axis to a West-East land based one marks a fundamental shift between Mediterranean civilization and Western one.

>>32639040
>no Jewish metaphysics

>>32639062

Look at Spain, most of southern France, and Italy. That's more than half of the west.

Are you going to tell me that those places had anything to do with all of that stuff you mentioned?

>>32639164
There is no Russian civilisation, so far Russia has only been in the periphery of either Eastern or Western civilisations.

>>32639239

Meant to say Western Europe.

>>32639184
I assume you're aware that what you're calling Mediterranean civilisation (which I call Eastern) is separate from Greco-Roman.

>>32639239
Are you fucking kidding? The seat of Catholicism was in Italy, the first Gothic cathedrals were built in France, the first instances of perspective were in both France and Italy, polyphony originates in France, so does the dynastic state, modern calculus was pioneered by Descartes...

>>32639164
Soviet Russia, like Maoist China, is hyper-western civilization, more western than the West itself.

It picks up the quintessential western theory of Karl Marx and builds a new society based on it, completely erasing different traditions, something that the Enlightenment tried but couldn't do in the rest of the Western world, where these traditions survived.

Putin's Russia is merely the continuation of Soviet Russia, the ruling class are the same, the Chekists, silovik, former KGB, whatever you want to call them. More interesting is Yeltsin's Russia. Seriously, what the fuck was that?

>>32638971
>Civilisations are cultural realms that share the essentials of common religion, common styles, a common history. They're a kind of complex organism.
OK; I'll use your def. then for this discussion.

Does the shift of only one of those elements - religion or styles or history - change the civilization for you? And how do you define the borders of the "realm"?

>You don't see the difference? [...]
But the Heroes were also dead; and the Greek religion developed from the purely polytheistic and "material" gods to a panentheistic and "ideal"/immaterial sense, due to Platonic and Neoplatonic influence.
(Compare: Demiurge and Sophia at one side, Yahweh and Jesus at the other.)
So the religious shift you're seeing didn't exist, what happened instead was a series of small shifts, with the last one before Christianity being Plotinus-influenced pagans who believe in the Gods as the faces of the "One" becoming Plotinus-influenced Christians who believe in a sole God.

>The schism is the birth of Catholicism as a purely Western religion, adapted do the nascent Western culture.
Well, you can surely analyze as that, but this Western religion was almost indistinguishable from the Eastern/Orthodox religion in their beginnings.

>>32639300
I don't think you can separate Antioch and Alexandria from Greco-Roman civilization...

>>32639037
>Think of the most iconic Italian food you know, was it commonly eaten in 1200 AD?
Yes and no... most of them have some really old histories, but the modern recipes would look completely exotic for them.
Polenta came to my mind - the Romans used to eat a similar wheat-based gruel [pulmentum], but the modern corn-based one was obviously invented after 1492.

>>32639064
B-but chicha is tastier... and you can't sing "señora chichera, vendeme incakola"...

>>32639184

I know what you mean, and yes it had a tremendous effect on the Mediterranean world, but considering the whole area was pretty much under the same culture, christianized, grecorroman, I think the way to see it is the Mediterranean being the birthplace and primordial Western Civilization that later expanded and annexed the northern barbarian part of Europe to it, transforming and evolving as a result, while losing on the other hand a good portion of clay and people to the Islamic Civilization. That feel of lost clay lingered for a long time, giving "reason" for the Crusader spirit and also hostility towards the Byzantine World as it had become a separate, quasi heretic branch of the original Western Civilization ( in the eyes of the latin branch, ofc, itself a branch or subproduct of the result of the original Western Civilization, Mediterranean based, being torn apart)

>>32639397
If the essentials of the religion are gone, the civilisation is gone. I'm not saying it happens overnight, but if it happens it's not just the civilisation evolving, it's the civilisation dying and the birth of something new.

The reason that distinction is important is because it clarifies world history immensely. For example why Roman culture, which had remained largely unchanged for centuries, was now moving into an entirely different direction, while losing all the "progress" of Hellenic civilisation, be it in arts or politics. It wasn't a Hellenic civilisation going backwards.

>>32639543
Alexandria was already a capital of Hellenism under the Ptolemes. But in Roman times Alexandria and Antioch belonged to the new civilisation which was neither Greek nor Roman, but Near Easter: Syrian, Judean, Arabian. Everything in Rome now came from that region: religion, art, architecture. This is not a coincidence.

>>32639631
No, Westerners never considered the East "their" land. They did consider it God's land, but the Crusades weren't about conquest, they were about fighting for God.

>Mediterranean being the birthplace and primordial Western Civilization
Maybe if you think Paris is Mediterranean...

>>32639691
Maybe the thing isn't the religion itself but its "basal values"? I'm saying that because, while this "tying" of the civilization with the religion is interesting [also maybe fruitful to work with], it might be problematic when dealing with secular societies...

>>32639691
>But in Roman times Alexandria and Antioch belonged to the new civilisation which was neither Greek nor Roman, but Near Easter: Syrian, Judean, Arabian. Everything in Rome now came from that region: religion, art, architecture. This is not a coincidence.

This "new" civilization was the old conquered cultures assimilating into the dominant culture. It didn't begin in Roman times either, Will Durant speaks of how "Through Zeno [of Citium] the East insinuated its quietism and fatalism into Greek philosophy".

Greco-Roman civilization was always susceptible to such influences, just like Western civilization is susceptible to Eastern fads (from Theosophy's Indian obsession to Zen Buddhism) but doesn't stop being Western for it.

>>32639857
There are no secular civilisations, just civilisations which reach their urban stage and turn atheistic. But even then the soul doesn't change. Like I said, the most important part of the soul of a civilisation is its own unique way to perceive space and time. Greeks perceived space as defined bodies, Easterners as a cavern of substances, Westerners as infinite space of force. Westerners are obsessed with time and eternity, Easterners see it like their space with a beginning and an end, Greeks ignore it entirely.

That soul is expressed in religion but also in everything else. Take Mathematics: the Greeks have Euclidean geometry, to them Maths is only about physical bodies. Easterners have algebra, the Mathematics of magic and substances. Westerners have calculus, where everything turns into infinite sequences and the study of change through functions.

>>32640106
Would a Super-State European country

Orsomething like the EUreich bring about a new civilization

I would love to see a EU Reich personally, a Pan European Super-power to balance the East/West

>>32639875
>This "new" civilization was the old conquered cultures assimilating into the dominant culture.
Right, they "assimilated" into Rome by changing Rome into something never seen before?

>Greco-Roman civilization was always susceptible to such influences, just like Western civilization is susceptible to Eastern fads
So after 2000 years you still think Christianity is just a fad?
Nonsense. The religious awakening into true monotheism in the East was something completely new, as was the art.

>>32640106
English as usual being a bitch to debate in... I'm almost sure you mean "soul" as in Geist, not as in Seele, right?

Mate, it was a pleasure to discuss with you, but I need to sleep.

>>32640359
No, I mean soul, not spirit. Spirit is intellectual, it doesn't describe the intuitive nature of it.

As of this moment

West Culture = EU + those who want to enter EU

East Culture = Russia/China

>>32640398
I see.
Again, thank you for the discussion.

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>>32627133