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But Islam did little with what it inherited. There were few actual advances made during this Islamic Golden Age

I know.

The early Muslims are credited with inventing distillation and could distil just about anything - from alcohol to perfume. Hygiene is very important in the Muslim world so they invented and manufactured soap - centuries before the West - and hundreds of bathhouses were built throughout Muslim cities. They understood the fundamentals of light and how we see, and gave us the camera obscura. They invented algebra and worked out the angle of the tilt of the earth. They built the first windmill, pioneered the concept of the crank rod, and designed the first ever torpedo. Muslim creativity also led to the invention of a unique instrument called the astrolabe – it could find the direction of Mecca, tell the time and, with the help of the stars, navigate you across deserts and oceans. But perhaps most important of all they pursued the cause of knowledge, translating and preserving the works of the ancients and building the world's largest libraries – their 'houses of wisdom'.

That's not a lot at all....

What the Ancients Did For Us

Much better we still be living in mud huts. Some myth....

Take it with a grain of salt. The moslems began to translate Greek writings in the 9th century and took advantage of sources of learning to the east, from India and China which had at least as well developed and sophisticated cultures as the medieval Arabs.

Europe was not the pathetic mud hovel you imagine. One center of "islamic learning" was actually at Cordoba in Spain, where European scholars worked side by side with moslems who came in and assumed authority. Also well known is that much of "islamic learning" was accomplished by Christians living among them, and by jews who fled persecution in Europe, bringing western knowledge and inquiry with them, and were accepted in moslem regions.

For a knowledgeable presentation read Bernard Lewis. He makes clear that while the moslems had their high points, and made their contributions, they were best thought of as an "intermediate civilization". He also explores the fatal flaws of the civilization that has caused it to derail.

Trade was already growing fast between western europe and the eastern civilizations, and without the moslem middlemen the west would still have soon come alive in the renaissance. Taken all together the "golden age of islamic civilization" doesn't pass the Atlantis test.