Western culture

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Western civilization
)
For other uses, see Western culture (disambiguation).

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De architectura
Middle Eastern philosophy and theology

Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, or Western society, includes the diverse

belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies of the Western world. The core of Western civilization, broadly defined, is formed by the combined foundations of Greco-Roman civilization and Western Christianity.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
While Western culture is a broad concept, and does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines, it generally relates to the cultures of countries with historical ties to a European country or a number of European countries, or to the variety of cultures within Europe itself. However, countries toward the east of Europe are sometimes excluded from definitions of the Western world.

Western culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary and

scientific revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment
.

While traditionally shunned as a mainspring of Western civilization in favour of early Aegean cultures, the

Near-Eastern cultures,[27] and major advances in literature, engineering, and science, and provided the culture for the expansion of early Christianity and the Greek New Testament.[28][29][30] This period overlapped with and was followed by Rome, which made key contributions in law, government, engineering and political organization.[31]

Western culture continued to develop with the Christianization of European society during the Middle Ages, the reforms triggered by the

subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements) and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration
.

Terminology

Further information: Western world
Map of the Western world, based on Samuel P. Huntington's 1996 Clash of Civilizations.[45] In turquoise are Latin America and the Orthodox World, which are either a part of the West or distinct civilizations intimately related to the West.[46][47][48]
The World of Civilizations: Post-1990", map from Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (1996) indicating the world's postulated nine major "civilizations": Western, Latin American, Orthodox, Islamic, Sinic, Buddhist, Japanese, Hindu, and African.

"The West" as a geographical area is unclear and undefined. There is some disagreement about which nations should or should not be included in the category, when, and why. Certainly related conceptual terminology has changed over time in scope, meaning, and use. The term "western" draws on an affiliation with, or a perception of, a shared

which?] can be traced back to the affiliatory nature of Roman culture to the culture of Classical Greece, a persistent Greek East and Latin West language-split within the Roman Empire, and an eventual permanent splitting of the Roman Empire in 395 into Western and Eastern halves. And perhaps, at its worst,[citation needed] culminating in Pope Leo III's transfer of the Roman Empire from the Eastern Roman Empire to the Frankish King Charlemagne in the form of the Holy Roman Empire in 800, the Great Schism of 1054, and the devastating Fourth Crusade of 1204. Conversely, traditions of scholarship around Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid had been forgotten in the Catholic west and were rediscovered by Italians from scholars fleeing the 1453 fall of the Eastern Roman Empire.[35] The subsequent Renaissance, a conscious effort by Europeans to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of the Greco-Roman world, eventually encouraged the Age of Discovery, the Scientific Revolution, Age of Enlightenment, and the subsequent Industrial Revolution
. Similarly, complicated relationships between virtually all the countries and regions within a broadly defined "West" can be discussed in the light of a persistently fragmented political landscape resulting in a lack of uniformity and significant diversity between the various cultures affiliating with this shared socio-cultural heritage. Thus, those cultures identifying with the West and with what it means to be "western" change over time as the geopolitical circumstances of a place changes and what is meant by the terminology changes.

It is difficult to determine which individuals or places or trends fit into which category, and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary.[49][50][51][page needed] Globalization has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all modern cultures are, to some extent, influenced by aspects of Western culture. Stereotypical views of "the West" have been labeled "Occidentalism", paralleling "Orientalism"—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of "the East".

Some

Frankish victory over the Umayyads at the 732 Battle of Tours as "Europeans" according to Appiah, denoting a shared sense of identity.[53]

A former, now less-acceptable synonym for "Western civilisation" was "the white race".[54]

As Europeans discovered the extra-European world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly been considered the

Qing China for the first time in the 19th century.[55]
Thus the
Greater Persia and Greater India
—but is now used synonymously with "Near East" in most languages.

History

Further information: History of Western civilization
Part of a series on
Philosophy
Philosophies
By period
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Branches
Philosophers

The earliest civilizations which influenced the development of Western culture were those of Mesopotamia; the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran: the cradle of civilization.[56][57] Ancient Egypt similarly had a strong influence on Western culture.

Phoenician mercantilism and the introduction of the Alphabetic script boosted state formation in the Aegean and current-day Italy and current-day Spain, spawning civilizations in the Mediterranean such as Ancient Carthage, Ancient Greece, Etruria, and Ancient Rome.[58]

The

the Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment.[59]

The West of the Mediterranean Region during the Antiquity

Alexander the Great

While the concept of a "West" did not exist until the emergence of the

barbarians of most of Europe to the north. During this period writers like Herodotus and Xenophon would highlight the importance of freedom in the Ancient Greek world, as opposed to the perceived slavery of the so-called barbaric world.[60]

Alexander's conquests led to the emergence of a

literature and art later provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the Roman Empire as it swept up Europe and the Mediterranean world
, including the Hellenistic world in its conquests in the 1st century BCE.

Following the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world, the concept of a "West" arose, as there was a cultural divide between the

Coligny Calendar
).

Maison Carrée in Nîmes, one of the best-preserved Roman temples
The Roman Empire (red) and its client states (pink) at its greatest extent in 117 AD under emperor Trajan
The Roman Empire in 330. The area in red shows the zone of influence of the Latin West, while the area in blue shows the eastern Greek part.

For about five hundred years, the Roman Empire maintained the

Greek East
and consolidated a Latin West, but an east–west division remained, reflected in many cultural norms of the two areas, including language. Eventually, the empire became increasingly split into a Western and Eastern part, reviving old ideas of a contrast between an advanced East, and a rugged West.

From the time of Alexander the Great (the

Slavic
cultures, which slowly became integrated into Western culture: starting mainly with their acceptance of Christianity.

The Greek and Roman

Jewish Christian tradition out of which it had emerged was all but extinguished, and antisemitism became increasingly entrenched or even integral to Christendom.[65][66]
Much of art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church.

In a broader sense, the

Classical Antiquity was better preserved in the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis Roman civil law code was created in the East in his capital of Constantinople,[68] and that city maintained trade and intermittent political control over outposts such as Venice
in the West for centuries. Classical Greek learning was also subsumed, preserved, and elaborated in the rising Eastern world, which gradually supplanted Roman-Byzantine control as a dominant cultural-political force. Thus, much of the learning of classical antiquity was slowly reintroduced to European civilization in the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

The birth of European West during the Middle Ages

Mosaic of Justinian I with his court, circa 547–549, Basilica of San Vitale (Ravenna, Italy)[69]
St. Martin's cathedral in Spišské Podhradie (Slovakia) and the Spiš Castle
behind the cathedral
Stone bas-relief of Jesus, from the Vézelay Abbey (Burgundy, France)
Notre-Dame, the most iconic Gothic cathedral,[70] built between 1163 and 1345

The Medieval West referred specifically to the Catholic "Latin" West, also called "Frankish" during Charlemagne's reign, in contrast to the Orthodox East, where Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire.

After the

fall of Rome, much of Greco-Roman art, literature, science and even technology were all but lost in the western part of the old empire. However, this would become the center of a new West. Europe fell into political anarchy, with many warring kingdoms and principalities. Under the Frankish kings, it eventually, and partially, reunified, and the anarchy evolved into feudalism
.

Much of the basis of the post-Roman cultural world had been set before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, mainly through the integration and reshaping of Roman ideas through Christian thought. The

cathedrals, monasteries and seminaries
, some of which continue to exist today.

After the

medieval Islamic world. The Greek classics along with Arabic science, philosophy and technology were transmitted to Western Europe and translated into Latin, sparking the Renaissance of the 12th century and 13th century.[32][33][34]

Catholic philosopher of the Middle Ages, revived and developed natural law from ancient Greek philosophy
.

Medieval Christianity is credited with creating the first modern universities.[37][38] The Catholic Church established a hospital system in Medieval Europe that vastly improved upon the Roman valetudinaria[71] and Greek healing temples.[72] These hospitals were established to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age," according to the historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse.[39] Christianity played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies, such as human sacrifice, slavery,[73] infanticide and polygamy.[43] Francisco de Vitoria, a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic thinker who studied the issue regarding the human rights of colonized natives, is recognized by the United Nations as a father of international law, and now also by historians of economics and democracy as a leading light for the West's democracy and rapid economic development.[74] Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the twentieth century, referring to the Scholastics, wrote, "it is they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the 'founders' of scientific economics."[40]

Later Middle Ages (Rome and Reformation)

The rediscovery of the

civil rights, equality before the law, procedural justice
, and democracy as the ideal form of society began to be institutionalized as principles forming the basis of modern Western culture, particularly in Protestant regions.

In the 14th century, starting from Italy and then spreading throughout Europe,[75] there was a massive artistic, architectural, scientific and philosophical revival, as a result of the Christian revival of Greek philosophy, and the long Christian medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities.[76] This period is commonly referred to as the Renaissance. In the following century, this process was further enhanced by an exodus of Greek Christian priests and scholars to Italian cities such as Florence and Venice after the end of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople.

Christopher Columbus arrives at the New World.

From

Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, religious influence—especially the temporal power of the Pope—began to wane.[83][84]

Expansion of the West: the Era of Colonialism (15th–20th centuries)

United States Constitution

Early modern era

From the late 15th century to the 17th century, Western culture began to spread to other parts of the world through explorers and missionaries during the Age of Discovery, and by imperialists from the 17th century to the early 20th century. During the Great Divergence, a term coined by Samuel Huntington[85] the Western world overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization of the time, eclipsing Qing China, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. The process was accompanied and reinforced by the Age of Discovery and continued into the modern period. Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including lack of government intervention, geography, colonialism, and customary traditions.

The Age of Discovery faded into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, during which cultural and intellectual forces in European society emphasized reason, analysis, and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority. It challenged the authority of institutions that were deeply rooted in society, such as the Catholic Church; there was much talk of ways to reform society with toleration, science and skepticism.

Philosophers of the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant,[86] who influenced society by publishing widely read works. Upon learning about enlightened views, some rulers met with intellectuals and tried to apply their reforms, such as allowing for toleration, or accepting multiple religions, in what became known as enlightened absolutism. New ideas and beliefs spread around Europe and were fostered by an increase in literacy due to a departure from solely religious texts. Publications include Encyclopédie (1751–72) that was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary, 1764) and Letters on the English (1733) written by Voltaire spread the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment was the

modern science, during which developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed views of society and nature.[87][88][89][90][91][92][excessive citations] While its dates are disputed, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution, and its completion is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Newton's 1687 Principia
.

Industrial Revolution

The

steam power, and the development of machine tools.[93] These transitions began in Great Britain and spread to Western Europe and North America within a few decades.[94]

A Watt steam engine. The steam engine, made of iron and fueled primarily by coal, propelled the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and the world.[95]

The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major impact of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th centuries.[96][97][98] The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes.[99][100][101][102] GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy,[103] while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies.[104] Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals, plants[105] and fire.

The First Industrial Revolution evolved into the Second Industrial Revolution in the transition years between 1840 and 1870, when technological and economic progress continued with the increasing adoption of steam transport (steam-powered railways, boats, and ships), the large-scale manufacture of machine tools and the increasing use of machinery in steam-powered factories.[106][107][108]

Post-Industrial era

Tendencies that have come to define modern Western societies include the concept of

Discovery and Enlightenment and the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions.[109][110]

In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries, mostly in the European Union where some member states have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years,[111] and also elsewhere. Secularism (separating religion from politics and science) increased. Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world, where 70% are Christians.[112]

The West went through a series of great cultural and social changes between 1945 and 1980. The emergent mass media (film, radio, television and recorded music) created a global culture that could ignore national frontiers. Literacy became almost universal, encouraging the growth of books, magazines and newspapers. The influence of cinema and radio remained, while televisions became near essentials in every home.

By the mid-20th century, Western culture was exported worldwide, and the development and growth of international transport and telecommunication (such as

Moon Landing
.

It was, in recent history, and remains, the dominant power and director of human civilization.[original research?]

Arts and humanities

See also: Western canon
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux in the Duchy of Normandy (left). The Bayeux tapestry is one of the supreme achievements of the Norman Romanesque
.

While dance, music, visual art, story-telling, and architecture are human universals, they are expressed in the West in certain characteristic ways.[113]

In Western dance, music, plays and other arts, the performers are only very infrequently masked. There are essentially no taboos against depicting a god, or other religious figures, in a representational fashion.

Music

For modern Western music, see Music industry.

In music, Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church,[114] and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages. This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music and its many derivatives. The Baroque style, which encompassed music, art, and architecture, was particularly encouraged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional, intended to stimulate religious fervor.[115]

The

symphony orchestra, and the string quartet
are also significant musical innovations of the West.

Painting and photography

Jan van Eyck, among other renaissance painters, made great advances in oil painting, and perspective drawings and paintings had their earliest practitioners in Florence.[117] In art, the Celtic knot is a very distinctive Western repeated motif. Depictions of the nude human male and female in photography, painting, and sculpture are frequently considered to have special artistic merit. Realistic portraiture is especially valued.

Photography and the motion picture as both a technology and basis for entirely new art forms were also developed in the West.

Dance and performing arts

Classical music, opera and ballet: Swan Lake pictured

The ballet is a distinctively Western form of performance dance.[118] The ballroom dance is an important Western variety of dance for the elite. The polka, the square dance, the flamenco, and the Irish step dance are very well known Western forms of folk dance.

Elizabethan theatre, with playwrights including William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson
, is considered one of the most formative and important eras for modern drama.

The soap opera, a popular culture dramatic form, originated in the United States first on radio in the 1930s, then a couple of decades later on television. The music video was also developed in the West in the middle of the 20th century. Musical theatre was developed in the West in the 19th and 20th Centuries, from music hall, comic opera, and Vaudeville; with significant contributions from the Jewish diaspora, African-Americans, and other marginalized peoples.[119][120][121]

Literature

epic poem by Dante Alighieri. Engraving by Gustave Doré
.

Western literature encompasses the literary traditions of Europe, as well as North America, Latin America and Oceania.[122]

While epic literary works in verse such as the

Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
(c. 1000 CE) have been cited as the world's first major novel but they had a very limited long-term impact on literary writing beyond their own day until much more recent times.

The novel, which made its appearance in the 18th century, is an essentially European creation. Chinese and Japanese literature contain some works that may be thought of as novels, but only the European novel is couched in terms of a personal analysis of personal dilemmas.[113]

As in its artistic tradition, European literature pays deep tribute to human suffering.[113] Tragedy, from its ritually and mythologically inspired Greek origins to modern forms where struggle and downfall are often rooted in psychological or social, rather than mythical, motives, is also widely considered a specifically European creation and can be seen as a forerunner of some aspects of both the novel and of classical opera.

The validity of reason was postulated in both Christian philosophy and the Greco-Roman classics.[113] Christianity laid a stress on the inward aspects of actions and on motives, notions that were foreign to the ancient world. This subjectivity, which grew out of the Christian belief that man could achieve a personal union with God, resisted all challenges and made itself the fulcrum on which all literary exposition turned, including the 20th–21st century novels.[113]

Architecture

Important Western architectural motifs include the Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic orders of Greek architecture,[124] and the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Victorian styles, which are still widely recognized and used in contemporary Western architecture. Much of Western architecture emphasizes repetition of simple motifs, straight lines and expansive, undecorated planes. A modern ubiquitous architectural form that emphasizes this characteristic is the skyscraper, their modern equivalent first developed in New York and Chicago. The predecessor of the skyscraper can be found in the medieval towers erected in Bologna.

Cuisine

See also:
Western food

Western

cloves, nutmeg, mastic, galingale, and other imported spices had become part of the Western cuisine.[125]

Saracen influence can be seen in medieval cookbooks. Some recipes retain their Arabic names in Italian translations of the

Viandier. Fried pieces of beef simmered in wine with sugar and cloves was called bruet of Sarcynesse in English.[125]

Scientific and technological inventions and discoveries

Medieval Christians believed that to seek the geometric, physical and mathematical principles that govern the world was to seek and worship God. Detail of a scene in the bowl of the letter 'P' with a woman with a set-square and dividers; using a compass to measure distances on a diagram. In her left hand she holds a square, an implement for testing or drawing right angles. She is watched by a group of students. In the Middle Ages, it is unusual to see women represented as teachers, in particular when the students appear to be monks. She is most likely the personification of Geometry, based on Martianus Capella's famous book De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii [5th c.], a standard source for allegorical imagery of the seven liberal arts. Illustration at the beginning of Euclid's Elementa, in the translation attributed to Adelard of Bath.
A doctor of philosophy of the University of Oxford, in full academic dress. The typical dress for graduation are gowns and hoods or hats adapted from the daily dress of university staff in the Middle Ages, which was in turn based on the attire worn by medieval clergy.[126]
analogue computer
.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Apollo Lunar Module pilot of the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, poses for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during his Extravehicular Activity (EVA) on the lunar surface.

A notable feature of Western culture is its strong emphasis and focus on innovation and invention through science and technology, and its ability to generate new processes, materials and material artifacts with its roots dating back to the Ancient Greeks. The scientific method as "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses" was fashioned by the 17th-century Italian Galileo Galilei,[127][128] with roots in the work of medieval scholars such as the 11th-century Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham[129][130] and the 13th-century English friar Roger Bacon.[131]

By the

Nobel Prizes were established in 1895. The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901.[132] The percentage of ethnically European Nobel prize winners during the first and second halves of the 20th century were respectively 98 and 94 percent.[133]

The West is credited with the development of the

atomic pile constructed in Chicago in 1942.[141]

Communication devices and systems including the

ink jet printer, plasma display screen and World Wide Web were also invented in the West.[150][151][152][153][154]

Ubiquitous materials including aluminum, clear glass,

petrochemicals were invented by Westerners. Most of the elements were discovered and named in the West, as well as the contemporary atomic theories to explain them.[155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162]

The

computerised tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance, x-rays, and light, ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopy, were all first developed and applied in Western laboratories, hospitals and factories.[citation needed
]

In medicine, the pure

double-blind study and evidence-based medicine are critical scientific techniques widely used in the West for medical purposes.[citation needed
]

Euler is widely regarded to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history.

In mathematics,

battery (1800), the unity of electricity and magnetism (1820), Biot–Savart law (1820), Ohm's law (1827), and Maxwell's equations (1871). The atom, nucleus, electron, neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners.[citation needed
]

The world's most widely adopted system of measurement, the International System of Units, derived from the metric system, was first developed in France and evolved through contributions from various Westerners.[170][171]

In business, economics, and finance,

double entry bookkeeping, credit cards, and the charge card were all first used in the West.[172][173]

Westerners are also known for their explorations of the globe and

landing of robots on Mars (2004 and 2012) and on an asteroid (2001), the Voyager 2 explorations of the outer planets (Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989), Voyager 1's passage into interstellar space (2013), and New Horizons' flyby of Pluto (2015) were significant recent Western achievements.[176][177][178][179][180]

Media

Main article: Western media

The roots of modern-day Western mass media can be traced back to the late 15th century, when

spread of the printing press, from which the publishing press derives its name.[181]

In the 16th century, a decrease in the preeminence of Latin in its literary use, along with the impact of economic change, the discoveries arising from trade and travel, navigation to the New World, science and arts and the development of increasingly rapid communications through print led to a rising corpus of vernacular media content in European society.[182]

After the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957, satellite transmission technology was dramatically realised, with the United States launching Telstar in 1962 linking live media broadcasts from the UK to the US. The first digital broadcast satellite (DBS) system began transmitting in US in 1975.[183]

Beginning in the 1990s, the Internet has contributed to a tremendous increase in the accessibility of Western media content. Departing from media offered in bundled content packages (magazines, CDs, television and radio slots), the Internet has primarily offered unbundled content items (articles, audio and video files).[184]

Religion

Main article: Western religions

The native religions of Europe were

Celtic polytheism and Slavic polytheism
. Before this time many Europeans from the north, especially Scandinavians, remained polytheistic, though southern Europe was predominantly Christian from the 5th century onwards.

Western culture at some level is influenced by the

Christian civilization.[186][187][188][189]

According to a survey by Pew Research Center from 2011, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world where 70–84% are Christians,[112] According to this survey, 76% of Europeans described themselves as Christians,[112][190][191] and about 86% of the Americas' population identified themselves as Christians,[192] (90% in Latin America and 77% in North America).[193] 73% in Oceania self-identify as Christian, and 76% in South Africa are Christian.[112]

2012

switching to Christianity in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries.[196]

At the same there has been an increase in the share of agnostic or

atheist residents in Europe; these made up about 18% of the European population in 2012.[198] In particular, over half of the populations of the Czech Republic (79% of the population was agnostic, atheist or irreligious), the United Kingdom (52%), Germany (25–33%),[199] France (30–35%)[200][201][202] and the Netherlands
(39–44%) are agnostic or atheist.

As in other areas, the Jewish diaspora and Judaism exist in the Western world.

There are also small but increasing numbers of people across the Western world who seek to revive the indigenous religions of their European ancestors; such

neo-pagan
belief systems enjoy notable minority support in Western states.

Sport

Main article: Western sports
Classical Antiquity
.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee, and considered father of the modern Olympic Games

Since classical antiquity, sport has been an important facet of Western cultural expression.[203][204]

A wide range of sports was already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sports in Greece influenced one another considerably. Sports became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic Games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, instigated the modern revival of the Olympic movement. The first modern Olympic games were held at Athens in 1896.

The Romans built immense structures such as the

discus and javelin
. The sport of
bull worship and sacrifice and is often linked to Rome, where many human-versus-animal events were held. Bullfighting spread from Spain to its American colonies, and in the 19th century to France, where it developed into a distinctive form in its own right.[205]

Jousting and hunting were popular sports in the European Middle Ages, and the aristocratic classes developed passions for leisure activities. A great number of popular global sports were first developed or codified in Europe. The modern game of golf originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II's banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery.[206]

The

ping pong, modern tennis, association football, netball and rugby.[207]

Football (or soccer) remains hugely popular in Europe, but has grown from its origins to be known as the world game. Similarly, sports such as cricket, rugby, and netball were exported around the world, particularly among countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, thus India and Australia are among the strongest cricketing states, while victory in the Rugby World Cup has been shared among New Zealand, Australia, England, and South Africa.

colony of Victoria in the mid-19th century. The United States also developed unique variations of English sports. English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period. The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Many games are known as "football" were being played at colleges and universities in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, the "Father of American football". Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States. Volleyball was created in Holyoke, Massachusetts
, a city directly north of Springfield, in 1895.

Themes and traditions

Madonna and Child
painting by an anonymous Italian from the first half of the 19th century, oil on canvas

Western culture has developed many themes and traditions, the most significant of which are:[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ British archaeologist D.G. Hogarth published The Nearer East in 1902, which helped to define the term and its extent, including Albania, Montenegro, southern Serbia and Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt, all Ottoman lands, the entire Arabian Peninsula, and Western parts of Iran.

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Sources

Further reading

External links

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