Why is greece referred to as the "Cradle of Westen Civilization"?

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fluke

because democracy was born there.

RICE1

Because Greece is where modern civilization of western thought and philosphy came from. (The idea of democracy, medicine, science and rational thought.) The idea that you could reason out anything through thought and question and answer. Socrates. Plato,

cymoneys

Because of its ideas and their influence on Western society, Greece is known as the "cradle of western civilization."

Hoplite

Because the greek civilization was the foundation of the european and western civilizations. You can just get a taste of that from these documentaries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqGTCgL3tcw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQeCkYIoMCI

cpinatsi

Theatre, Rational thought, democracy, architecture, science, mathematics, medicine, all came fro ancient Greece.

carmelo_sabato

i ques part of it as www.avgerinos.no explains it the Greek alphabet! plus.

emiliosailez

Amongst thousands of other reasons you will find in any book, let me give you my thoughts only because you asked. Curiosity and all those unknown factors that allowed that curiosity to explore, experiment and question. Curiosity combined with reason. Everything else in ancient Greece was kindled and inspired by those elements that created the foundations for Europe to become Europe.

kay

Because Greece has a long history, and democracy came from there, together with many inventions.

papyrusbtl

Because it is. An unusual combination of history and circumstances made the politicians and philosophers of Athens formulate new ideas about people, government, and life.
One BIG event is the telling "break" with Eastern and Western Civilization, and it defines a lot that comes afterward: The Trojan War (1184 B.C.).
The trojan war was fought over a person----more shocking than that, a woman! She was a Spartan woman (Helen), and Spartan women were legendarily beautiful. But the key fact of this 10-year war is that it was about a single person. This meant that an individual was so important, and so "individual" that they had a great worth to the Greeks. This concept was new, and completely foreign to Eastern Civilization, and it still is, where no person exists outside of their "group", which they must conform to---you see this happening today in Iraq--people define themselves by their group--Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds. This was the breaking point between East and West, right along the coast of what is now Turkey.

slaveof12gods

there are history books out there you know!

jackie o

because democracy is usually accepted as being from greece, but other countries had it long before the US as well.

RCrumb

Because they were the first Europeans as an Empire to borrow eastern Ideas from the Arabs and Egyptians and further afield.
Ideas like: Algebra and Geometry, but also Vegetarianism (from India), for example. The Pythagoreans, who were Vegetarians as well as Olympic Athletes, as well as Mathematicians. Nothing else in Europe, at the time, was anywhere near them, but we later followed in their footsteps...

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