ABSTRACT
The past is not a story; only in retrospect under an interpretation does it unfold as history like a fictional tale in a book. Consequently, in reporting what happened in the past we lack one of the characteristics of a story: a definite beginning. However, in Greece a short time after 600 BC certain changes were taking place in human thought that seemed to have no precedent; and it is on these changes in the way human beings began to think about the world and themselves that the most fundamental aspects of today’s Western civilization-its science, ethics, politics, and philosophy-are founded. There were events of significance before this time; but 600 BC onwards marks alterations in human thought sufficient to describe it as a beginning.
