"The Origins of Western Civilization: What it is, and Where did it come from" is the first in an 8-part series on "The Odyssey of Western Civilization" by the Freedom Academy, hosted by Victor Davis Hanson.
The West arose in a particular time and place, Greece in the eighth
century B.C., during the dark age that followed the collapse of
Mycenaean civilization. An agricultural revolution gave rise to the
autonomous yeoman farmer, backbone of the democratic city-state. Their
innovations included constitutional government, free-market economics,
private property and individual liberty - concepts unknown in Mycenae,
not to mention Egypt and Mesopotamia. Here the West begins.