Olympic Games (interesting, actually)

[Timotheus]

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

Well, it is a matter of perspective. If they say that Greece owns its early start - compared with the rest of Europe - to technological and cultural imports from the east (agriculture, cities, wheel, copper, bronze, iron, etc. etc.), who would disagree? In that very basic sense, the whole world culture actually derives from four to six civilization centres, so that is hardly news.

However, once you leave the ground of the basic inventions which had established agricultural and urban societies, Greek culture became pretty autochthonous and followed its own distinctive path. And Western culture is again a different thing (Greek PLUS Roman PLUS Christian PLUS Enlightment), so these scholars actually shoot very high if they really believe they can 'prove' the eastern origin of western culture.

I personally find it rather distrubing that they are going at this with some revolutionary goal in mind. Not the lets gather the evidence and theorize from there but instead this sounds more like lets create a theory and then see what evidence we can dig up to support it.