>Everyone says start with Greeks >But the Greeks weren't

>>9899170
Everyone knows "Start with Gilgamesh" is implied, you plebian. :>)

Start with the dinosaurs.

>>9899170
Because everyone here is too focused on Western lit.

File: 1502603178950.jpg (5KB, 250x174px) Image search: [Google]

5KB, 250x174px

>>9899176

>Not starting with Sumerian Rain Songs

>>9899170
The Greeks were the first people to systematically record the literature and history that would become the basis for Western Civilization. You can start with others if you are less interested in the Western tradition, but given how dominant the Western tradition is, it's kind of foolish to start anywhere else unless you live in China or Africa.

captin crunch has autism

>>9899170

Greeks created a lot of the modern paradigm. For a westerner looking back, a lot of things really do start with the Greeks and Romans.

If you start looking at the stuff before the Greeks (of which there isn't much) you do tend to start looking east (not a bad place to look, desu) and you see the stuff that their ideas developed from or were influenced by. But it's not very accessible, so it makes sense to learn the Greeks first and then the East.

>>9899466

I'm not familiar with any early African canon. I will say you should add India to that small list because they do have an impressive canon (Kalidasa, the Arthashastra, the Upanishads).

>>9899494
Great point on India. For whatever reason, I frequently forget about them in conversation.

Well the big guys before the Greeks were the Egyptions and from what I've gathered they the Greeks moved so far past them that there really isn't much of a connection. The Greeks were the first to really move outside the realm of religious thinking

Oh also there isn't Egyptian literature to begin with.

>>9899227
The large majority of posters here are from Western countries, whodathunk

>>9899227
Because Western lit has influenced practically all other literatures as well. No other literature developed like Western lit.

Moreover, a lot of non-Western countries are not book cultures or they're one-book cultures (Muslim countries). There is a massive difference on the individual level between a book culture and a non-book culture.

>>9899763
>Muslim countries
>one-book cultures

What did he mean by this?

>>9899517
>religious thinking is le bad!!!

>>9899763
>Because Western lit has influenced practically all other literatures as well.

You're going to have to point out the western influences in Ancient Indian literature, because I can't see it

>>9899893
Exactly what you think, you communist faggot.
>The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated into Spanish in one year.
>Greece — with a population of fewer than 11 million — translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined, with a total population of more than 300 million, translate into Arabic.
>According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, “In the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt’s per-capita income today is less than 20 percent of South Korea’s. Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic product than Taiwan in the 1950s; today, it is about 50 percent of Taiwan’s.”
>As Dr. A.B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist, has noted: “A regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world’s failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists.” He further asserted that “Egypt, in 1950, had more engineers than all of China.” That is hardly the case today.
-UN Arab Human Development Report

>>9899170
Because the Greek canon is the root of all Western literature. Think about the philosophers and dramatists who are still referenced and relevant from Greece, versus what the Egyptians and Sumerians produced.

>>9901444

What's the count on those Arabic translated into European languages Pre-1650?

>>9899170
All you need is a working knowledge of Greek Mythology and a firm grasp on Plato and Aristotle. Everything else is icing.

>>9899170
Start with the Vedas

>>9901824

Non sequitur.

>>9901824

Even then the Europeans completely abandoned the Arabs once Greek exiles from Constantinople reacquainted them with the real article in the 15th century.