How can we accurately identify which region belongs to which civilizations? Are boundaries based on culture, religion or politics what define civilizations?
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you can't
clash of civilization is a post cold war ideology and a meme
civilizations are not clearly defined as to be categorized like that
Fricking hippy.
civilizations are systems of culture and regulation that control human behavior.
So you can look at law, aesthetics, religion, philosophy, to get an idea of different civilizations.
A good example to clarify things can be how:
Roman Empire => Christendom => European Union
We can consider this all one civilization because within this space, a common set of culture, regulation, and norms dictated acceptable human behavior. Once you left the borders of this area, you likely entered a different civilization with differnet cultures and norms. As long as you travelled through Christian areas, you could expect people to behave in a Christian fashion. But the moment you crossed into the Arab world, you would encounter Islam, with a totally different set of behavior and values.
Things are of course fuzzy at the edges, but I would say law is the biggest deciding factor. Civilizations are complex organisms. Someday I would like to do research mapping them out definitively, but alas I am not paid to do it so it would be on my own time
so would Rome really be separate from Ancient Greece or is the conventional “Hellenic” accurate?
Romans basically copied Greek civilization. IMO civilization is a very difficult thing to create, so most people just assimilate into a more sophisticated civilization
civilization is a literal buzzword that people likes to pretend holds real value
"Western civilization" Is a useless umbrella term. If the map was accurate, it would show Italic, Germanic, Brittonic, Nordic, Frankish, Slavic, Grecian, Iberic, and god knows how many other civilizations in Europe alone.
You're too narrow. A better classification would be:
>Iberic/Visigothic
>Frankish/Rhine River (France, Lowlands, Germany, Italy, arguably Czechia and Slovenía)
>Nordic
>Slavic (everything Poland and eastwards)
>Balkan (former byzantine/ottoman regions + Hungarian Kingdom)
>British
If we are discussing aesthetics and government structure/legal systems, which is what defines a civilization in my mind, then this couldn't be any further from the truth.
Spain different from latin America is as moronic as the UK being grouped with France. Whoever made this map was braindead.
The U.S and Canada are more similar to Latin America than with Spain.
you can't, it's pretty much arbitrary
>c-civilizations are totally arbitrary!! T-that's why the difference between Afghanistan and Canada are totally superficial chud!!!!
amazing how stupid people are, fricking philistines
>most of the world is using the laws of napoleon
What made him so special?
who are you quoting?
not down to the town. theres a lot of blurry lines (for instance: balkans) between clearly different civilizational blocs. doesnt mean it isnt useful
West needs to be further divided between Latin, Anglo, Napoleonic, and post-soviet.
This is just my personal way of defining things. Obviously 'civilization' has different meanings, but I use it to mean a kind of macro-culture.
Specifically, civilizations share a common high culture, ideological framework and institutions, especially educational institutions. They can include many races, nations, modes of life (sedentary, nomadic, urban, rural), but their intellectual/ideological world undergoes a common development through time, including common cultural movements, controversies, etc. Ideological and other divisions might arise, but only if the division disrupts common intellectual development does it result in a civilization splitting. Orthodox and Western civilization are separate not because of religious schism but because of their completely different cultural and institutional development in the Middle Ages, while the Catholic and Protestant West, despite being far more violently opposed than the former, remained a part of the same civilization with the same institutions and developments (Renaissance, Enlightenment, etc). The Reformation itself is a common Western controversy, whereas its lack of impact in Orthodoxy is a sign that it was a separate civilization.
These distinct civilizations clearly existed in the past: looking at the world in 500 BC, 1000 AD, 1500 AD, they are clearly identifiable. But over the course of the last few hundred years Western civilization has subsumed all the others and now they only really exist as substrates within a global civilization. The differences that exist between modern Europe, China and Iran, however vast, are not civilizational differences, they are religious, ethnic, racial, ideological, etc: all the kinds of differences that one already finds within historical civilizations. This doesn't imply that their differences are less real or important, it just means they are not defined by a separate intellectual/institutional world, and if anything intra-civilizational divides are often more intense.
To my mind, the major civilizations that have existed historically are (not every society fits into one of these - some straddle two or more and others occupy none):
>3000 BC - Egyptian, including Nubia
>3000 BC - Mesopotamian, from the Sumerians to the Achamenids, possibly including Hittites
>2000 BC - East Asian, including Japan
>1200 BC - Mesoamerican
>800 BC - Classical/Greco-Roman
>800 BC - Indian/Brahmanical, including most of Southeast Asia until about the 13th century
>600 AD* - Western
>600 AD* - Orthodox
>600 AD - Islamic, including Muslim West Africa and Indonesia
>1200 AD - Theravada, including most of Mainland SEA and Sri Lanka
*Western and Orthodox civilizations drifted apart slowly, but were clearly distinct by 1000 AD. 600 AD is a convenient date for many reasons, such as the abandonment of Latin as the official language of the east.
Aside from these, the Sassanids and maybe Sogdians could also count as a separate Zoroastrian civilization between 200 and 700 AD, the Minoans and Mycenaeans as a single Aegean civilization, Tibet and Mongolia are another thing, as is ancient Judea, Phoenicia, Ethiopia - there are lots of 'isolates'. I'm not including non-literate civilizations like the IVC, Andes, most African societies, etc.
Latin America has never a distinct civilization. 'Western civilization' does not necessarily mean 'the West' in its modern form. Since everything is a part of Western civilization today, what we call 'the West' today is really just the historical core of Western civilization and its direct descendants: only in this sense is much of Latin America, like most of the world, not Western.
What does "civilization" even mean in the context of this map? This is just a mix of broad cultural and religious trends, and why is Japan not Sinic?
I like Ben Franklin's system. It's very neat, simple, and surprisingly accurate. Technically, I suppose it's a racial classification system, but it's close enough.
>Anglo-Saxons = white
>All other Europeans = swarthy
>Turks = tawny
>Everyone else = who?
Do you really think Southern Spain has more in common with Iceland than Greece?
Unironically yes.
Why is the Sahel and Malay not a part of "Islam", why is Latin America separate from "The West"