Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 10, 2024

Mediterranean Civilizational Attributes of Ancient Greco-Roman Civilization—An Examination of the Myth of European Civilizational Continuity

(Abstract)

Han Zhen

The narrative of European civilizational continuity from Ancient Greece and Rome to modern Europe is a myth constructed by European academia in the 19th century. This myth weakens the connections between ancient Greco-Roman civilization and other Mediterranean civilizations in Western Asia and North Africa by exaggerating their differences and discontinuities, thereby overshadowing their influence on Greco-Roman civilization, and magnifying the continuity and commonality between Greco-Roman civilization and modern Western European or Atlantic civilizations. The construction of a European identity through both the devaluation of Eastern civilizations and the exaltation of Greco-Roman civilization, and the subsequent description of the European identity, developed in modern times as a universal characteristic of the West. In reality, before the Middle Ages, the cultural commonality, affinity, and continuity between Ancient Greece and Rome and other Mediterranean civilizations in West Asia and North Africa far exceeded their cultural ties with Western Europe. At a time of unprecedented changes in the world, building an independent knowledge system that meets the requirements of the times necessitates thoroughly breaking away from the narrative structure of Western-centrism.