What is it? Where did it begin? When did it begin? Would geographically western civilizations at times not be considered part of it? Why?
It began with the Mycenaeans conquering and sleeping with the Minoans.
>>1097338
Nah, it would begin with the conception of the Minoan civilisation, not the downfall.
>>1097377
>what have the minoans ever done for us!
>>1097292
>Define
There's your problem right there. Historiography works from the documentary record, not by imposing (an act of eisegesis) poorly reasoned theoretical categories onto the past.
>>1097292
>When did it begin?
Sumeria. Google the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Sumerian Creation Myth. The Sumerians invented the city, writing, the wheel, domestication of the horse and cow, bronze working, slavery, monarchy, polytheism AND monotheism, art, drama and literature. The rest is a postscript.
>>1097477
It is a category nonetheless. The category 'civilization'. The western civilization can be traced back in origin to Greeks and all their funny ways, then passed on to the Romans.
But that's inducing the concept onto them. Greeks and Romans didn't go the termae for a bath and chat to one another " oi lad, feels good living the life in the western civilization'.
The whole story really begins much later, in the middle ages, and it's the Church when collecting all the knowledge and tradition of the classics begins coining a sort of muh heritage identity by which the Latin Christianity, aka western Europe, is different to Eastern Christianity, aka the Byzantines, and also the rightful heir and continuum of the Greco-Roman world.
>>1097292
Blue = Western (Different shades mean different sub-sets)
White = Not Western
>>1097600
Why is Czechia not having the same color as Slovenia?
>>1097591
That's a very different question, "What does the category of western civilisation mean in contemporary / past discourses?"
Also you're acting as if the category is a substantial material fact separate from its use.
>>1097292
It's defined entirely by the observer. To the Chinese, there was no immediate difference between Arabs and Frenchman, just as we ascribe to so many disparate cultures membership within the preposterous "East".
>>1097569
So Arab civilization can be construed as Western?
I think of a 'civilization' as a group of cultures sharing a common elite/intellectual culture that goes through a common development over time. It doesn't have any defining characteristic because it can completely change over time, but it remains one civilization so long as it all (or at least the 'core' areas) changes together.
In that view, there was a single Classical civilization up until 600 AD, because even though Christian Rome was very different to Classical Rome, it was still a unified culture. Western Rome at that point had collapsed, but had yet to grow into a separate civilization. It's really after 600 AD that Classical civilization breaks up into three; Western, Orthodox, and Islamic.
That said, Western civilization can't be said to have been 'born' at any single point. It slowly broke away from the Classical/Orthodox world after 400 AD and didn't completely split from the Orthodox world until the 11th century. The Carolingian period is probably the most useful milestone, since the Franks being declared the successors to Rome is a pretty string symbolic break with Byzantium, so long as you keep in mind that the West was in many ways still following in Byzantium's footsteps until the 11th century.
The ancient Greeks were the founders of Classical civilization, which was inherited by Western, Orthodox, and Islamic civilization. Calling them the founders of Western civilization makes as much sense as calling the Egyptians or Sumerians the same thing; it's not technically wrong, because the West inherited all those cultures, but so did plenty of others.
As for the Minoans/Mycenaeans, I'd say nobody really inherited them. Their civilization completely collapsed, and though they were the same people a the Greeks, none of their institutions and very little of their intellectual culture was passed on.
I'm starting to think that, in part by a decent amount of "we wuz" by subsequent empires, western civilization is a concept that we've invented ourselves and tried to push back onto the past, in some way of managing to connect the powers-that-be to the powers-that-were in a claim at right to rule, not that we can say the Anglo countries have any actual connection to the ancient Hellenic world.
>>1097591
>heir and continuum of the Greco-Roman world
So is that all it is?
>>1097569
>The rest is a postscript.
