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Western civilization traces its roots back to Europe and the Mediterranean. It began in ancient Greece , transformed in ancient Rome , and evolved into Medieval Western Christendom before experiencing such seminal developmental episodes as the development of Scholasticism , the Renaissance , the Reformation , the Enlightenment , the Industrial ...
History of Western civilization – record of the development of human civilization beginning in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, and generally spreading westwards. Ancient Greek science, philosophy, democracy, architecture, literature, and art provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the Roman Empire as it swept up Europe, including ...
It can be strongly associated with nations linked to the former Western Roman Empire and with Medieval Western Christendom. The civilizations of Classical Greece (Hellenic) [1] and Roman Empire (Latin) [2] as well as Ancient Israel (Hebraism) [3] and early Christendom are considered seminal periods in Western history.
The ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia were the oldest civilization in the world, beginning about 4000 BCE.. A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages (namely, writing systems and graphic arts).
The earliest civilizations which influenced the development of Western culture were those of Mesopotamia; the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran: the cradle of civilization.
Early signs of the rebirth of civilization in western Europe began to appear in the 11th century as trade started again in Italy, leading to the economic and cultural growth of independent city-states such as Venice and Florence; at the same time, nation-states began to take form in places such as France, England, Spain, and Portugal, although ...
The origins of Western civilization can be traced back to the ancient Mediterranean world. Ancient Greece [d] and Ancient Rome [e] are generally considered to be the birthplaces of Western civilization—Greece having heavily influenced Rome—the former due to its impact on philosophy, democracy, science, aesthetics, as well as building designs and proportions and architecture; the latter due ...
Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations". Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of the failure of a "creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet ...