Were Greek and Roman empires the most advanced ones for its time, were or Babylon, India, China, Egypt, etc. more advanced than them?

希腊和罗马帝国是那个时代最发达的帝国吗？抑或巴比伦、印度、中国、埃及等国更为发达?

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来源：三泰虎     http://www.santaihu.com/46093.html      译者：Joyceliu

Michel Juneau, Sanskritist, student of history

If we consider the classical period, say 500 BCE to 500 CE (where CE = common era = AD), India was more advanced in many fields, such as mathematics - including the invention of ‘Arabic’ numerals and zero -, grammar and phonetics, astronomy, botany, logical inference, metallurgy - steel for blades, smelting of zinc -, banking and mass production of cloth exports manufactured using various printing processes. Rome was ahead in architecture and engineering - bridges, aqueducts and public buildings, water wheels, road building - as well as military technology and organisation.

如果我们考虑到是古典时期公元前500年到公元500年(CE =公历纪元=公元),印度在许多领域更为发达，如数学——包括阿拉伯数字和零的发明，语法和语音学、天文学、植物学、逻辑推理、冶金-钢叶片、冶炼锌、银行业和大规模生产服装出口，使用多种印刷工艺。罗马在建筑和工程方面领先——比如桥梁、沟渠和公共建筑、水轮、公路建设——以及军事技术和统治机构。

Let me talk in more detail about that quintessential Roman speciality: the arch.

让我更详细地谈谈罗马的精髓所在:拱门。

India had advanced stoneworking techniques, but did not use them to build arches, which had been known in the Middle East since great antiquity - the earliest surviving example is the Bronze Age arched Canaanite city gate of Ashkelon in modern-day Israel, dating to c. 1850 BCE - but not used much except by Romans until the Arabs and Persians picked up on them. In Mesopotamia they were mostly used for drains back then.

印度有先进的石料加工技术，但没有使用它们来建造拱门，这在中东自古就为人所知——现存最早的例子是青铜时代的拱形迦南城门，在今天的以色列，可追溯到公元前1850年- - -但在阿拉伯人和波斯人注意到他们之前，罗马人很少使用它。在美索不达米亚，当时石头主要用于排水沟。

But then in 350 CE, the Sassanian emperor built a magnificent catenary vault to cover the audience chamber in his new new palace at Ctesiphon. The catenary vault mimics the shape of a hanging chain (Latin catena) but upside down, and requires no buttressing, which is why it is still standing. This was apparently first used in this building, not in Rome. (The catenary arch was later used by Christopher Wren in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and is used in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.)

但是在公元350年，萨珊皇帝在泰西封的新宫殿里建造了一个华丽的悬链线拱顶，用来覆盖他的新宫殿。悬链线拱顶模仿了悬链(拉丁语catena)的形状，但它是倒置的，不需要支撑，这就是为什么它仍然屹立不倒的原因。这显然是第一次在这个建筑中使用，而不是在罗马。(拱悬链线拱门后来也被克里斯托弗·雷恩在圣保罗大教堂和巴塞罗那圣家堂中使用。)

Most ancient Indian temples used corbelled arches and domes, in which each course of a wall is cantilevered out from the lower course until they meet in the middle. This required an equal weight of masonry on the other side to balance, so the buildings were absolutely massive, with little interior space and almost no light. The Bhitargaon temple (450 AD) and Mahabodhi temple (7th century AD) built in by Gupta Dynasty, included true arches, but the technique was not picked up by the architectural style as a whole.

大多数古老的印度庙宇都使用带支撑的拱门和圆顶，每一层墙都从较低的层伸出，直到它们在中间相遇。这需要在另一侧用同样重量的砖石来平衡，所以建筑体都很庞大，内部空间很小，几乎没有光线。公元450年，古普塔王朝修建了比塔冈寺和摩诃菩提寺(公元7世纪)，修建了真正的拱门，但整个建筑风格并没有采用这种技术。

Indians kept building temples this way even after the Muslim invaders came building their domed mosques, until this day. The point of the Indian temple was not to shelter people. All the interior space needed was enough to house one or more murtis, and to allow a few pandits to make offerings. The point of the temple was to provide an ostentatious outwards display, to communicate various things, local history, legends, etc, in the various decorations, and to let the deity know that those who paid for this really, really appreciate his or her support. So there was no real reason to adopt the true arch and dome for monumental architecture.

直到今天，印度人仍然以这种方式建造寺庙，即使是在穆斯林侵略者建造圆顶清真寺之后。印度寺庙的目的不是为了庇护人们。所有的内部空间都足够容纳一个或更多的宗室和一些梵学家制作供品。寺庙的目的是为了向外展示一些浮华的东西，通过各种各样的装饰传达各种事情，当地的历史，传说等等，让神知道那些为此付出的人真的，真的感谢他或她的支持。因此，采用真正的拱形和穹顶的纪念性建筑并没有真正的理由。

This is a temple ‘shikhara’ with corbelled construction.

这是一座带支撑结构的“锡客哈拉”寺庙。

I also provide a picture of the Mahabodhi Buddhist temple, which has a true dome, below. I am sure that you will agree that Indian temple building did not really need the true dome.

我还贴了一幅马哈菩提佛教寺庙的图片，它有一个真正的圆顶，在下面。我相信你会同意印度寺庙建筑并不需要真正的圆顶。

This experience supports the answer given by Robert Maxwell. Societies develop technology that they need to fit within the social and economic framework.

这个经验支持Robert Maxwell给出的答案。社会发展他们需要的技术以适应社会和经济。

It is worth pointing out that stone arches were used in China in ancient times, the oldest surviving example Being the Anji Bridge dating from around 600 CE. This is not a rudimentary arch. On the contrary it is a fairly sophisticated open-spandrel segmental arch bridge built entirely of stone. The basic principle of the open-spandrel segmental arch bridge ways applied in Hadrian’s Bridge over the Danube built from 103 to 105 CE by Apollodorus of Damascus, but he used timber arches, each spanning 38 metres.

值得指出的是，中国古代使用石拱，现存最古老的例子是公元600年左右的安吉桥。这已经不是基本的拱门了。相反，它是一个相当复杂的开放拱桥，完全由石头砌成。公元103年到105年，大马士革的阿波罗多洛斯在多瑙河上建造了哈德良大桥，它采用了开放的拱肩式分段拱桥的基本原理。

This style of timber arches on stone bases has been much used in the Far East since. To me it seems that a stone bridge might be fine in the dry Mediterranean with its small streams, but would have been prohibitively expensive spanning the mighty Danube, especially as great rivers have a tendency to wash out bridges as the Danube did Hadrian’s bridge a few decades later, and as has been the fate of a great many bridges in China over the years.

从那以后，这种以石头为基础的木拱门就在远东广泛使用。在我看来石桥可能对干燥的地中海的小溪流来说挺合适，但跨越多瑙河的成本非常昂高,尤其是大河容易冲垮桥梁，多瑙河就冲垮了哈德良桥（建成几十年之后），中国许多桥梁也是如此的命运。

Here is a beautiful example of a open-spandrel segmental timber arch bridge from Japan: the Kintai Bridge in Yamaguchi Prefecture, built in 1673. The pic shows one pier and the underside of the arch.

这里有一个来自日本的开放式拱肩木拱桥的美丽例子：建于1673年的山口县金泰桥。这张照片显示了桥墩和拱门的底部。

Interestingly, the principle of the true arch was independently invented in pre-Colombian Meso-America, as well as by the Inuit (‘Eskimos’) in the humble igloo.

有趣的是，真正的拱形建筑的原理是中南美洲前哥伦比亚人独立发明的，以及简陋的冰屋中的因纽特人(爱斯基摩人)发明的。

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Robert Maxwell

There’s no real way to say, since “technological advancement” doesn’t have a hard definition or a measuring stick and especially since “advanced” is dependent entirely upon the outlook of the society in question.

很难说，因为“技术进步”没有一个严格的定义或衡量标准，尤其是因为“先进”完全取决于社会前景。

As an example, let’s take architecture. The Romans, of course, were extremely advanced for their time in the art of stonework architecture. The Chinese don’t, at first glance, appear to be. On the surface, this looks like a slam dunk: the Romans were more advanced than the Chinese when it comes to architecture.

以建筑为例。当然，当时的罗马人在石雕建筑艺术方面是非常先进的。乍一看，中国人似乎不是。从表面上看，这就像是绝杀：在建筑方面，罗马人比中国人更先进。

But it doesn’t work this way. The Chinese didn’t build stone buildings like the Romans did. It just wasn’t in their architectural repertoire, even when they obviously had the engineering expertise to learn how to do it. Their buildings tended toward using stone for load-bearing and walls, not in massive colonnades.

但事实并非如此。中国人不像罗马人那样建造石头建筑。石头建筑不在他们的建筑体系中，即使他们显然有工程专业知识来学习如何用石头建造。他们的建筑喜欢用石头作为承重和墙壁，而不是建造巨大的柱廊。

The Chinese architectural corpus, however, shows an extremely sophisticated engineering technique for their own style and preferences. Chinese engineers probably couldn’t have built the Pantheon, but Roman engineers would probably have had just as much trouble building, say, some of the more elaborate, larger temples and Imperial halls: they required extremely complicated architectural techniques that the Romans just didn’t, so far as I know, develop. So it’s hard to compare because the architectural repertoires of the two were so incredibly variable that it’s best to look at the differences as a difference in style and engineering tradition than anything to do with actual engineering prowess.

然而，中国的建筑文集中记录了一种极其复杂的工程技术，以满足他们自己的风格和喜好。中国工程师可能无法建造万神殿，但罗马工程师可能在建造更精致、更大的寺庙和皇宫时遇到同样大的麻烦:他们需要极其复杂的建筑技术，而据我所知，罗马人还没有开发出这种技术。所以很难进行比较，因为这两种建筑风格如此迥异，令人难以置信，所以最好把它们的差异看作是风格和工程传统的差异，而非实际的工程实力的差异。

The Romans and the Chinese were also extremely advanced in their own fields when it came to their products: Chinese silk and, later, porcelain, were the product of master artisans, dyers, tailors, and potters. On the other hand, the Romans were extremely well-known for their facility in glass: so far as we’re able to gather, Roman glass was extremely popular in Han-era China. The Chinese didn’t produce high-quality glass, but Rome, similarly, didn’t produce high-end porcelain. Again, it’s a question of specialization and the development of artisanal traditions more than a question of general advancedment.

罗马人和中国人在他们各自的领域也非常先进，比如他们制造的商品:中国丝绸，后来的瓷器，都是工匠大师、染工、裁缝和陶工的作品。另一方面，罗马人以擅长玻璃而闻名:据我们所知，罗马玻璃在汉代的中国非常受欢迎。中国人不生产高质量的玻璃，而罗马同样不生产高端瓷器。同样的，这是专业化和发展手工传统的问题，不是先不先进的问题。

Social and political systems followed the same tack: the Chinese developed their systems along the lines of their own indigenous extended conversations in philosophy, as did the Romans. The conclusions and results of these discussions were widely variant at times, but that’s simply because they followed a different train of thought based on differing axioms, not because one was more advanced than the other.

社会和政治体系遵循同样的方针:中国人和罗马人一样，按照他们自己的本土哲学延伸的方式发展他们的体系。这些讨论的结论和结果有时会有很大的不同，但那只是因为他们遵循了基于不同公理的不同思路，而不是其中一个比另一个更先进。

So it’s a question of difference, not advancement.

所以这是一个差异的问题，而不是先进的问题。

On the other hand, some of the choices in the question were a bit odd. The Babylonians, for example, were far from contemporaries with the Romans: Babylon reached its first apogee some thousand years before the foundation of Rome, and a second peak during the very early Roman Republic. Egypt, meanwhile, went from a series of indigenous and foreign dynasties, to conquest by the Persians, then by Alexander, and finally the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Which Egypt are we talking about here, then?

另一方面，问题中的一些选项有点奇怪。例如，巴比伦人与罗马人相差甚远：巴比伦在罗马建立之前的几千年就达到了它的第一个高峰，在罗马共和国建立之初又达到了第二个高峰。与此同时，埃及从一连串的本土和外国王朝，到波斯人的征服，然后是亚历山大，最后是托勒密王国。那么，我们在这里讨论的是哪个埃及呢?

Contemporary with the full, Augustinian Roman Empire, of course, would be the presence of an advanced Egypt… as a province of Rome.

与完整的奥古斯都罗马帝国同时代的当然是一个先进的埃及，它是罗马的一个省。

To confuse things even more, there wasn’t really a Greek Empire—at least, by some nomenclatures, not until the Byzantines. There was a shortlived Kingdom of Macedon that ruled over the old Achaemenid Empire, but that shattered after Alexander’s death, leaving us with, among other… the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.

更让人困惑的是，当时并没有真正意义上的希腊帝国——至少在某些术语中是如此，直到拜占庭时期。有过一个短暂的马其顿王国，统治着古老的阿契美尼德帝国，但在亚历山大死后，这个王国瓦解了，只剩下埃及托勒密王朝。

So it’s hard to really say, based on the question, since a lot of the choices are either incredibly vague (India? Which Indian state? Which Chinese dynasty?) are totally non-contemporaneous with the others (Babylon, Dynastic Egypt), or don’t really fit into a more-advanced-less-advanced framework.

因此，基于这个问题，很难说清，因为许多选择要么非常模糊(印度?哪个印度?哪个中国王朝?)与其他王朝完全不同时代(巴比伦，埃及王朝)，或者并不适合套用更先进或更不先进的框架。

Ollie Phelan, works at Self-Employment

Yes , Definitely .

是的，当然。

Its just simply that we adopted the culture of the Renaissance , which was a rebirth of Greek and Roman culture .

很简单，我们接受了文艺复兴时期的文化，这是希腊和罗马文化的重生。

The West also adopted what was basically a Roman system of government - Senate and Congress rather than Kings .

西方也采用了罗马的政府体制——参议院和国会，而非国王制。

At the time there was very little knowledge of Indian and Chinese philosophy + literature in Europe that far surpassed the philosophy of Greeks and Romans .

当时，在欧洲，对印度和中国的哲学及文学的了解非常少，但其实他们远远超过了希腊和罗马的哲学。

The Crusades and Marco Polo opened all that up .

十字军东征和马可波罗开启了这一切。

And it was Arabic Libraries that had copies of Greek Mathematicians and Philosophers that revolutionised European thinking .

阿拉伯图书馆复制了希腊数学家和哲学家的著作，彻底改变了欧洲人的思维方式。

So it was basically from (what we might call Babylon / Arabic) that the Renaissance was enabled .

所以文艺复兴基本上就是从(我们可以称之为巴比伦/阿拉伯语)开始的。

But its only now that the full weight of Chines /Japanese philosophy is hitting Europe .

但直到现在，中国/日本哲学的厚重底蕴才开始冲击欧洲。

Even Zen practice has been scientifically proven to be more restful than sleep (X 3 times more)

即使是禅宗也被科学证明比睡眠更能让人放松(是睡眠的3倍)

And is even incorporated into Psycho-therapy

甚至被纳入心理治疗

More time has elapsed between the building of the Pyramids to Caesar and Cleopatra , than between Caesar and the moon-landings

从恺撒到克利奥帕特拉，建造金字塔的时间比从恺撒到登月之间的时间还要长

Peter Thomson, former retired intelligence analyst, trained in history

Robert Maxwell put it best. But I can expand a little. In technology, China was well ahead of the Mediterranean in metallurgy, pottery and irrigation until late medieval times. India (and earlier Babylon) was ahead in medicine, mathematics and textiles - the latter at least until the C18. Meso-America was ahead of just about everybody in plant domestication.

罗伯特·麦克斯韦说得最好。但我可以扩展一下。在技术方面，直到中世纪晚期，中国在冶金、陶器和灌溉等方面都远远领先于地中海。印度(以及早些时候的巴比伦)在医药、数学和纺织品方面领先——后者至少在18世纪之前领先。中美洲在植物驯化方面几乎领先于所有国家。

We are familiar with the classical philosophical tradition, so tend to rate that highly. Parallel Chinese thought is hard to translate into the same terms, and much Indian thought has been lost, so it’s difficult to compare. We do know the western tradition draws on Muslim as well as classical learning, and Muslim learning in turn draws on the ancient Near East. We’ll be able to compare better in a century or so, when more study has been done.

我们对古典哲学传统很熟悉，所以对它有极高的评价。同样的中国思想很难被翻译成相同的术语，许多印度思想已经失传，所以很难比较。我们知道西方的传统借鉴了穆斯林和古典的学习，而穆斯林的学习反过来又借鉴了古代近东。在一个世纪左右的时间里，如果我们做了更多的研究，我们就能更好地进行比较。

China certainly evolved a technology of politics that enabled stable rule of much larger areas than Rome could envisage - some of it transferred to Europe from the C17 (meritocratic examination, forms of bureaucracy).

中国发展了政治技巧，使其能够在比罗马能想象的更大地域上实行稳定的统治——其中一些在17世纪(精英考试，官僚形式)传到了欧洲。

Other than that, well is a camel better than a yak? Depends if you’re in a desert or on a mountain.

除此之外，骆驼比牦牛好吗?这取决于你是在沙漠还是在山上。

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William Uchtman, Writer at Writers and Authors (1986-present)

First off, the Greeks and Romans despite the overlap in them were two different cultures. The Greeks gave us stuff like democracy, cartography, early versions of devices like the alarm clock, geometry, philosophy, algebra and astronomy.

首先，尽管希腊人和罗马人的文化有重叠，但他们是两种不同的文化。希腊人给我们带来了民主、制图还有闹钟、几何、哲学、代数和天文学等早期雏形。

The Romans gave us architecture, the beginning of interior plumbing, roads, the Julian calendar, Roman numbers, the earliest books and a calendar.

罗马人给我们带来了建筑、内部管道、道路、儒略历、罗马数字、最早的书籍和日历。

Thomas Musselman

You can compare dates empires were at peak likely populations or maximum square miles under occupation. But “advanced” is tricky. Some prefer to estimate “dynamism” which is little better. Can any place be advanced if it enslaves? If women are subservient? If it tortures, maims, rapes with abandon?

你可以比较一下各个帝国在人口高峰期或统治的最大国土面积。但是“发达”不好说。有些人更愿意评估“活力”。任何地方如果被奴役，如果女人是顺从的，如果可以恣意虐待、残害、强奸，能算发达吗??

You really have to specify your interest and then look. If waterworks you can compare irrigation methods, pumps, aqueducts. Etc.

你必须明确你的兴趣所在，然后再分析。比如针对供水系统你可以比较灌溉方式，水泵，沟渠。等等。

Also is “India” Harappa? Is “China” “China” if just one small kingdom? Egypt was little changed over time; Mesopotamia was invaded and ruled by outsiders often; when it was was it “Persia”?

“印度”也是哈拉帕吗?“中国”是否只是一个小国?埃及随着时间的推移变化不大;美索不达米亚经常被外人入侵和统治;“波斯”是什么时候的波斯?

Martin Freeman

It depends very much on what you mean.

Architecturally advanced? The Greeks and Romans.

Militarily advanced? The Greeks and Romans.

Intellectually advanced? The Greeks and Romans.

Artistically advanced? The Greeks and Romans.

So as you can see, it all depends on what you mean by “advanced.”

这在很大程度上取决于你的意思。

架构上先进?希腊人和罗马人。

军事上先进?希腊人和罗马人。

智力发达?希腊人和罗马人。

在艺术上先进?希腊人和罗马人。

正如你所看到的，这完全取决于你所说的“发达”是什么意思。

Gwydion Madawc Williams, A lot of reading of popular histories

Babylon and Egypt had both lost their independence before the rise of Alexander the Great. They had ceased to be independent powers.

China under the Qin and Han dynasties were probably more powerful than the overlapping Greek and Roman Empires. The Han drove out nomads often identified with the Huns who did so much to weaken Rome.

在亚历山大大帝兴起之前，巴比伦和埃及都失去了独立。他们不再是独立的国家。

秦汉时期的中国可能比希腊和罗马帝国加起来更强大。汉人驱逐了经常被认为是匈奴人的游牧民族，他们为削弱罗马做出了巨大贡献。

Rakesh Choudhary, Physicist, Cosmologist, Biologist, mathematician (2015-present)

In knowledge romans and Greek were very advanced but in architecture india, china and egypt were advanced.

在知识上，罗马和希腊非常先进，但在建筑上印度、中国和埃及更为先进。

Victor

Of course they were. In fact, Greek Civilisation has become the civilisation of the whole World.

他们当然更先进。事实上，希腊文明已经成为全世界的文明。

There is practically nothing the Greeks did not think about. Any field you care to consider the Greeks were ahead; literature, art, math, geometry, architecture, the Olympics, philosophy (which means the use of Reason to understand the material and psychological world). This was possible because the Greeks “cut their gods down to size”, no all powerful magical god for the Greeks. No God who tells people how to live without reasoning, without pushing the envelope, beyond the static following of the Holy Books.

几乎没有什么是希腊人没有想到的。在任何你关心的领域，希腊人都先人一步；文学，艺术，数学，几何，建筑，奥运会，哲学(这意味着用理性去理解物质和心理世界)。这是可能的，因为希腊人“把他们的神砍成碎片”，对希腊人来说，不存在最强大的魔法神。没有哪个神会告诉人们没有推理地生活，不需要突破极限，不需要遵循圣贤书。

In fact, Greek thinking was forbidden when the Roman Emperor Constantin made the seductive (but obviously not rational) Jewish-Christian God the God of the Empire.

事实上，当罗马皇帝康斯坦丁将(但显然不是理性的)犹太-基督教上帝变成帝国的上帝时，希腊人的思想是被禁止的。

At that point the use of Reason to understand everything stopped, until the Renaissance, when the Europeans reconnected with Greek Thought and pushed Judeo-Christianity back.

那时，用理性去理解一切被禁止了，直到文艺复兴时欧洲人重新与希腊思想联系在一起，并把犹太-基督教带了回来。

Remember also Greeks invented democracy, which means the people choose the rulers and humans make the laws, no God laws, no priests interpreting God, no divine kings.

还记得希腊人发明了民主，这意味着人民选择统治者，人类制定法律，没有神的法律，没有解释神的牧师，没有神圣的国王。

Until the Northern Europeans, the French and the Anglo Saxons were able to recreate democracy, a few centuries ago, the whole World was submerged in dictator hell by despots, absolute kings or dictatorial priests.

几个世纪前，在北欧人、法国人和盎格鲁-撒克逊人重建民主之前，整个世界都被暴君、绝对的国王或独裁牧师淹没在独裁者的地狱里。

In fact, even now, the only modern democracy that comes close to Greek direct democracy is Switzerland.

事实上，即使是现在，唯一接近希腊直接民主的现代民主国家是瑞士。

Practically the whole World is far behind the Ancient Greeks and have no democracy at all.

实际上，整个世界都远远落后于古希腊，根本就没有民主。

Even great cultures like China are not able to master democracy yet.

即使是像中国这样伟大的文化也无法驾驭民主。

Remember too the Ancient Jews, another accomplished culture, were goat keepers when the Greeks had theater, the Olympics, philosophy, democracy, etc.

同样要记住的是，当希腊人已经有了戏剧、奥运会、哲学、民主等等的时候，古代犹太人，另一个颇有成就的文明，还是牧羊人。

Remember too Greeks were not ashamed of the human body; athletes competed naked. Right now nowhere is that possible, even in the West. As you know, in Moslem countries women have to hide body and face. Strict Christians and Jews have to “dress modestly”. I mean, it is rational to cover ourselves in most situations, but to make women cover their faces and hide the shape of their bodies is rejecting that the human body has dignity. Irrational.

记住，希腊人也不以人体为耻；运动员参加裸体。现在，这是不可能的，即使是在西方。如你所知，在穆斯林国家，妇女必须隐藏身体和面部。严格的基督教徒和犹太教徒必须“穿着端庄”。我的意思是，在大多数情况下，遮盖自己是合理的，但是让女人遮住自己的脸和身体的形状是对人的尊严的拒绝。非理性的。

Of course, Modern Greeks are still far behind Ancient Greeks. They do not like to admit it, precisely because they have not remastered the use of Reason to figure out why. They are stuck looking at the Acropolis and feel inferior to their ancestors.

当然，现代希腊人仍然远远落后于古希腊人。他们不愿意承认这一点，恰恰是因为他们没有重新掌握用理性来找出原因。他们被困在雅典卫城，感觉自己不如祖先。

Vageesh Vaidvan, Historian

Simply no!!! There were several civilizations much more advanced than Greeks much before Greek even knew what is civilization. Pyramids were standing there on the face of earth much before that. There were several other civilizations in Asia much before what is known as ancient history of Greeks. Chinese, Indian (Indus Valley), Sumeru (Middle East) , Persians to name few. It is due to western obsession with Greek and Romans during renaissance (15th and 16th Century AD), where they looked for inspiration and glory that Greeks are portrayed as most advanced civilization in some quarters. Today's world dominance by European countries and the countries populated by migrants from Europe (US, Brazil, Canada, Australia etc.) help to carry this perception.

没有! ! !在希腊人知道什么是文明之前，有几个文明比希腊人先进得多。在此之前，金字塔就矗立在地球表面。在被称为希腊古代史之前，亚洲还有过其他几个文明。中国、印度(印度河流域)、苏美鲁(中东)、波斯人等等。这是由于西方在文艺复兴时期(公元15和16世纪)对希腊和罗马人的痴迷，他们在那里寻找灵感和荣耀，希腊人在某些方面被描绘成最先进的文明。如今，欧洲国家和欧洲(美国、巴西、加拿大、澳大利亚等)移民的国家在世界上的主导地位，助长了这种看法。

Konstantinos Sfoungaris, works at Ecole Normale Supérieure De Cachan

Definitely yes. First let’s precise a few things though. The ancient Greeks have been around from 2000 BC and the term ‘ancient’ is used until circa 300 AD when the emperor Constantine transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople. Arguably, Greeks and Romans form a civilisation continuum, with every major accomplishment being finally integrated within the political entity we call Roman Empire.

肯定是的。首先让我们来精确地计算一下。古希腊人大约从公元前2000年开始存在，“古代”一词一直被使用到公元300年左右，君士坦丁大帝将罗马帝国的首都迁至君士坦丁堡。可以说，希腊和罗马形成了一个文明的连续体，每一项重大成就最终都融入了我们称之为罗马帝国的政治实体。

Greeks did not only have advanced science, but created the notion of science altogether; reason and proof were just unknown to mankind before maybe 600 BC.

希腊人不仅有先进的科学，而且创造了科学的概念;在大约公元前600年之前，人类还不知道原因和证据。

Some like to compare a civilisation’s mightiness by some inventions or by some structures. The thing is though that Greeks enjoyed intricate structures and placed them with a direct connection to their societies. What’s majorly ignored as well is that structures such as the lighthouse of Pharos, Alexandria, were demolished (yet it was the tallest building to have stood for about a millennium after, aside from Khufu’s pyramid-which, from a mechanistic point of view, is just a pile of rocks).

有些人喜欢用一些发明或结构来比较一个文明的强大。问题是，希腊人喜欢错综复杂的结构，并将其与社会直接联系起来。同样被忽视的是，像亚历山大的法罗斯灯塔这样的建筑被拆毁了(然而，除了胡夫的金字塔——从机械的角度来看，那不过是一堆岩石)。

Another thing that’s totally not taken into account is the economy, the trade, and so on. The Greeks maintained a far greater GDP per capita than any other civilisation (except for the Romans during the imperial times) and were capable of things like tourism (i.e. Olympics).

另一件完全没有考虑到的事情是经济，贸易等等。希腊人的人均GDP远高于任何其他文明(帝国时代的罗马除外)，并且有能力发展旅游业(比如奥运会)。

Closing, Greek civilisation just did not die out as many other ancient ‘mega-civilisations’ did. It just continues on to this day.

最后，希腊文明并没有像许多其他古代“巨型文明”那样消亡。它一直延续到今天。

Quora User, Irish

If we’re talking about the ancient world, the Egyptians were the most “advanced” in terms of an entire civilization. However, the ancient Greeks were the most “advanced”, in terms of science, math, philosophy, etc. Western Civilization is built on what the ancient Greeks achieved in math, science, and philosophy and the ancient Greeks were an authority on many different forms of science, math, and philosophy, until just a couple centuries ago. The ancient Greeks were unrivaled in the ancient world, in terms of math, science, and philosophy.

如果我们说的是古代世界，就整个文明而言，埃及人是最“先进”的。然而,古希腊人在科学,数学,哲学等方面最“先进”。西方文明是建立在古希腊人在数学,科学和哲学方面取得的成就的，直到几世纪前，古希腊人在许多不同形式的科学,数学,哲学领域一直是权威。古希腊人在数学、科学和哲学方面在古代世界是无与伦比的。