“I’d really love for somebody to compile a list of “the world’s great civilizations,” with their starting and ending dates showing an average of 200 years.
The Chinese civilization is arguably at present around 3000 years old, the Japanese around 1500.
Rome lasted somewhere between 800 and 2000 years, depending on how you figure it.”
The keyword is “democracy”! Chinese and Japanese “civilizations” were never democracies!
The Roman democracy only lasted for 300+ years until it was destroyed by the establishment of the empire with its autocratic, imperial leaders.
The quote referenced age of “great civilizations,” not of democracies.
However, the USA is the world’s oldest democracy, at 235 years or so. And there is a reasonable argument it didn’t become a true democracy till the 1960s.
Rome and Athens were never anything we would consider even a limited democracy. To get to 300 years for Roman “democracy,” even stretching various points, you have to go back to well before it was a “great civilization.” For most of the time is was “democratic” it was just one of many jostling city-states on the Italian peninsula.
There are no other democracies in history that have anything like 200 years under their belt. Republics, yes, but not democracies.