Olympic Games (interesting, actually)

[SigniferOne]

I am afraid you misquote me. If I may repeat myself:

We aim to show that civilisation evolved naturally at the confluence of three continenents rather than miraculously in the isolated mountainous terrain of Greece.

Impeccable, I'd say.

And yes, I think that this is impeccable - except, perhaps, for "isolated".

Oops, I'm sorry to have misquoted you. It was I who found the last paragraph of that website intolerable. But you didn't mention the problematic vitriole of that website in your blog, or in this thread, which could lead one to assume that you had no problem with it.

With so many skirmishers taking their aim at "Western civilization", this website and its authors are certainly not the scholars who should be taken with open arms. But as for the notion that Greece evolved naturally at the confluence of various civilizations before it, that is such a truism that I wouldn't have ever considered singling it out as impressive. I cannot imagine the claim that Classicists hold Greeks as miraculously springing from nothing, as anything other than a straw man. No Classicists have ever held that, and in the heyday of the Renaissance and Enlightenment everyone quite frequently, and quite uncontroversially, attributed the invention of the astrolabe to the Babylonians (following Herodotus) than to Anaximander, and attributed many other proto-scientific advances to non-Greeks besides it. The GilgameshGames website hinges on this straw man -- which only they made up -- to dismantle the artificial concept of Western civilization. That is scandalous and deserves the utmost opprobrium.

We may certainly attribute the invention of physical competition, as of walking, to the hoary civilizations prior to the Greek. Obviously. But we can attribute the invention of physical perfection and the worship of humanity only to the Greeks, thus making the core GilgameshGames argument inconsistent with the facts. I wish you would have mentioned this, when listing parts of the website you disagreed with.