Thanks to the Muslim world (But what about the last 600 years?)

7DAYS ^ | 17 March 2006 | 7DAYS

[zimdog]

The Greeks and Romans killed the ancient civilization of Egyp long before the 7th century

[Cicero]

The Greeks and Romans conquered Egypt, but it still survived as a civilization. Cleopatra, for instance, was descended from Greeks, but she had become an Egyptian, much as the Mongol dynasty that conquered China was absorbed and became Chinese.

Alexandria was among the most civilized cities in the world until all of North Africa was brutalized and debased by the Muslim conquerors.

The same was true of one of the earliest cradles of civilization, Mesopotamia. A variety of dynasties controlled it--Babylonian, Persian--but it remained civilized until the Muslims took over and created the cesspool of the middle east.

Orson Scott Card has a fascinating essay appended to the last novel in the Ender series, "Children of the Mind." He distinguishes between edge civilizations and center civilizations. Center civilizations persist. China is a prime example. They last for centuries, even millennia. The only two center civilizations that have completely died out, Egyptian and Mesopotamian, were both killed by the Arabs. Not even the Mongols managed to do it, but Islam did.