Marc
Donor
By four major civilizations do you mean Europe, the Islamic world, India and China?
Yes. Standard agreement about the four major civilizations of Eurasia circa 1350. Sinic: China and the Chinese cultural sphere - Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and parts of mainland Southeast Asia. Greater India: the subcontinent including Sri Lanka; Southeast Asia out to the Malay Archipelago. Islamic: Middle East, Central Asia, and along North Africa. European or Western: Generally, from the Atlantic to the Urals, defined primarily, like the Islamic world, by religion. By and large, they all were more or less co-equals until about 1500 CE. The Sinosphere had the largest population, and therefore the great gross wealth, but on a per capita basis there was apparently little difference in personal income between a farmer in China and one in France. A lot of people don't realize that Greater India had a geographical dispersion about as extensive as the Islamic community.
Obviously, there were other viable cultures and societies outside of these. They are simply the predominant ones in the vast Eurasian ecumenism.
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