I think the most successful civilization is Ancient Greece.
  We're still a part of it - it's just the homebase keeps moving
  around.   We're a part of ancient greece. We're a part of the
  very same civilization. It started in Greece, switched over to
  Rome, then to Constantnople, then to Rome then quickly to
  Europe, then shared with the USA. I see it all as one very long
  lived civilization. == makes it easier. Then we've just got a
  few civilizations to worry about. Of course, due to exchange of
  ideas and commerce and politics and whatnot, even the split into
  "western civilization" and "eastern civilization" etc is kind of
  misleading as well. But it's a little better than how we
  normally break things down I think smile emoticon ==