ABSTRACT
Our purpose here is to enrich the student’s understanding of Western civilization by pointing out its interconnections with Asia throughout history. The origins of what we call Western civilization are really in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor (Anatolia, or Asiatic Turkey), Phoenicia (modern Syria, Lebanon, and Israel), and the Aegean. Influences on early Western civilization came also from ancient Persia, still farther east. The Greeks and the Romans had their major connections not northward (until quite late in the Roman Empire) but eastward, from where, they realized, most of the wealth and the sophisticated ideas came; all of the world religions, including Christianity, are Asian in origin.
