Pedro

The alphabet hands down. Without that everything would be just talk!!

GjergjKastrioti

Definitely Christianity.

naylor182

Well I'd probably say Greek philosophy. When a lot of Greek classic texts reached Italy following the crushing of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, they kick-started the Renaissance, leading to great works and great thinkers. That was when the west (i.e. Europe) began to turn into a "civilisation".

hellhound9210

I chose mathematics and science because without that we'd be pretty dumb and not able to overcome natural causes such as disease and discover things

And to the people who chose Christianity could you explain to me why

Dr.GhettoPants

I would like to say Christianity, but I wont. Christianity has had a huge impact on the way way think and act today. Christianity, an eastern desert religion that is strange mix of Jewish mysticism and Greco-Roman philosophy and logic. Christianity is a religion of history and scholarly study. Its various greats and not so greats have argued about the nature of God, the various sacraments of the Church, and other subjects in an quest to discover the truth. This religion of one God and one truth molded the mind of the western world. Christians saw the earth and all its resources and wonders as a gift from God to Man for man to lord over and use. It seems only natural that people would see this world God gave to us and seek to probe its mysteries, to better understand the world we live and understand the deity who gave it to us. A short exerpt from a story I read recently gives an account of a Native American man contrasting the differences in how white man he was talking to and himself saw the world. He notes the white man believing there was one god, one truth, one universe, while the author believed that there were many truths.

A note on Roman Law, Roman law as we know it was codified in the 6th century during the reign of Emperor Justinian I in the Byzantine Empire, where it eventually spread west and established itself in Italy and became the basis for the Catholic CHurch's canon law while mixing with the various germanic law systems, forming a hybrid that would give rise to our modern law systems. It was in the east, however, that Roman law was preserved, codified, and eventually reintroduced back into the west.

However, my vote for what was the most important element of Western Civilization would have to be Geometry. The Scientific Revolution was built more upon the back of Pythagoras than that of Thomas Aquinas. These men and women looked at the world and strove to make order out of the chaos, to observe and examine nature with a calm detachment and studious interest, observing data, making hypothesis, and testing examples.

Rosi

What do you have to say about the current U.S. economic scenario then...

The media's gone to town saying it's the collpse of capitalism, and drawing parallels with the collapse of Soviet Union (when their communism caused the economy to crumble? correct me if im wrong but all i remember from the TV i watched during the USSR days is Gorbachev's stained forehead.)

falcon

While all of the above listed contributed to Western civilization, the question however was "which was the most important element?"
For that I voted for the "Greek philosophy."

Belisarius

I voted other because without Islamic scholars in Syria and Spain much of the knowldege that shaped Western Civilisation would have been lost.

Sun Tzu

I dunno this a tough but good question, Greek Philosophy did kick-start the Rennaissance. But when you think about the the era of enlightenment many of the inventions would not have been made without the Mathematics that Islam brought. Roman law is prevalent in today's courtrooms and Christianity is the largest religion that influences many. Overall I would have to say the old Phoenetic alphabet because every great thing like an education requires a foundation and to me that foundation of our learning is the Alphabet.

Lucius

Rosicrucian, I'm a tree-skinner by vocation. What do I know? But I notice that it started in something called the "financial sector." Rightly speaking, finance is not even supposed to be a sector of the economy. Consider that mathematics is not a science - it's the operating system, or language, of science, not a science in and of itself as such. The same applies to finance - it's supposed to be how the economy works, not one of the sectors which is worked upon.

So, yes, it might well be more serious than a regular bubble bursting.