Greece Did Not Create Western Civilization
The misconception of our origins
The Greeks were one of the greatest civilizations in history, with Democracy, beautiful sculptures and some of the greatest literature being under their vast belt of achievements; but their seemingly most obvious achievement, the birth of Western Civilization, is not on the list. Claiming the Greeks as the fathers of the West is an act of disservice towards legitimate history, as it bluntly ignores the historical disconnect between East and West that truly gave birth to Western Civilization. Although there is no denying the influence of the Greeks in Western Culture, they did not create it, but rather acted as a guide for the ones that did make it, the Romans and Barbarians.
But Democracy?
Although the Greeks can be credited as the creators of Democracy, they were not the ones who spread the idea, and to an extent, the democratic institutions of today are not based off on the Greeks at all. The fallacy of claiming that the Greeks spread democracy is that it ignores an entire era where they were completely absent in the West; the Roman period. After the end of the Roman Republic, the West never returned to democratic institutions for centuries, and the Roman Republic itself was not directly influenced by the Greeks.
