The origin myth of the modern West | Naoíse Mac Sweeney

We in the modern West still look back to ancient Greece as our imagined origin. We're still obsessed with ancient Greece.

About Naoise Mac Sweeney  "I'm Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Vienna. My research focuses on the construction of identity and cultural interaction. I am especially interested in the making of communities – not only their physical formation through landscape and architecture but also their social formation through cultural practice and conceptual formation through the construction of identity. I am a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My work to date has focused on these topics from the Iron Age to Classical periods in the ancient Greek world and Anatolia, in particular on Greek cities Ionia and Cilicia but also on Troy and myths of the Trojan War. My current project expands the geographical frame, considering migration and mobility around the Mediterranean in the Iron Age. I am also interested in wider engagement with antiquity and the politics of reception and heritage. I passionately believe that those of us who study the past also have a responsibility to the present."

Key Points • The Western origin story that begins in classical Greece oversimplifies history and inflates a singular inheritance. • Ancient Greece spanned Europe, Asia and Africa, and its legacy dispersed across Byzantium, medieval Islam, Central Asia and beyond. • Western Europe’s embrace of Greek heritage intensified after the Renaissance amid Habsburg-Ottoman rivalry, hardening Europe versus Asia boundaries and feeding early racial ideologies. • The origin myth of the modern West no longer serves us in the present. A better origin myth centers on diversity, cultural interconnection and active choice rather than linear descent.