^ Agreed Akvod.

...Wow.  No.  Roman culture = greek culture.  Historians marvel at how Greek culture took over Roman culture despite Rome taking over Greece. 

The Romans were hardly the first to conquer another land.  That's been going on since the beginning of human history.

While English certainly orginated in England, English isn't some original language.  It's heavily based on North German and French with some Latin as well.  You have Norse and French invaders to thank for the language we speak today.

That said, Rome does deserve a lot of credit for how Britain turned out today.  Before Rome conquered the British Isles, it was primarily Celtic.  If it hadn't been for Rome and the people they sent to rule there, the history of the British Isles would have been very different.

You also said China was to focused on its self to be influential.  While that's true in some regards, it's not a very accurate statement.  First, it wasn't that China was focused on its self, as it did plenty of exploration, and had plenty of contact with surrounding countries.  Hell, the great majority of its musical instruments are originally foreign.  However, China never cared about what the rest of the world was doing technologically.  There was a good reason for that.  Until the Renaissance, they were LIGHT YEARS ahead of everyone else.  It's not like pretended the West didn't exist; it's just when emmisaries came they were like "Pfft, what can YOU give US?"  Many of China's major inventions found their way over to the West.  The flow of knowledge was kind of a one way stream.

Also, so what if China didn't influence the West as much as Greece or Rome?  Western civilization only accounts for half of the world's population.  The other half was led and influenced by China for thousands of years. 

I guess my point is, Western history features far too many influential civilizations for one to be deemed the most influential.  However, China was easily the most influential civilization in Eastern history, and was light years ahead of the West.  They represented the pinnacle of civilzation for the great majority of human history, and influenced the ENTIRE WORLD with much of their progression.

Wait a second. If we're looking at the most influential civilizations, why would it be ones in the last thousand years? Wouldn't it be something much earlier? For example, it's pretty tough to say the Ottoman Empire was the most influential empire when you considered how much of their entire existence is descended from the Akkadians. If I was going to pick the most influential civilization, it wouldn't be something from the last millennia, and certainly not the British Empire. It's kind of like asking who the most influential man in history was. It was probably the guy who first discovered fire (or something of the sort), but we don't know his name. But we do know about the first empires.

Like I say when people bring up the Greeks, who do people look up to when they look at the similar/borrowed concepts? The Romans. And like I said, the Roman didn't just copy Greek culture word for word, just like Japan didn't just take Chinese, Korean, and eventually European/American cultures word for word, but adopted them, changed them, and made them their own, so that when future generations look for a foundation, they turn to them, not to the influencers of the influencers.

The Romans may not have been THE civilization that invented concrete, but did that civilization create the Pantheon? Did that civilization utilize it and spread it across like the Romans? Did the Greek conquer the West? No. They conquered the East, and soon Rome conquered that, and soon the Muslims conquered that as well.

But I think you do have a point in that maybe it's sorta pointless to ask my question. I mean, the Romans had a huge impact, but so did the British. Do we divide it up into spheres? That makes it even more complicated, way too much for the poll I made.

So I guess my poll is a bit pointless, but at least it's getting people to talk about history, and realize how interconnected we are, in both geography and time, and realize that each civilization, whether it is in a dark age, or a golden age  currently, had their own glory once.

But I do want to reemphasize the point that "X civilization did it FIRST" is a bad way of judging things. I say that if we are going to try to debate it, we should remember that the question is who "influenced" the most? Simply tacking on the originator of some idea, to the executor of that idea is lazy. We should be asking, who actually spread that thing, X, around the world? Who actually is the one that, either through conquest, colonization, investment, immigration, etc imposed some idea, technology, etc to others?

1. Greeks
2. Romans
3. British

Done.

I see your point.

Yeah, making a thread/poll like this is very difficult. You could, for example, make an argument that the British Empire was the most influential because it was the largest empire of all time. But then again, you could make an argument for the Roman Empire in that case, since they had a very large affect on the history of Britain. And then there were the Greeks before the Romans. It's all very complicated, and I think there are a lot of different answers a person could give (which is why a thread like this is very difficult but also a very good idea).

I was pretty lazy and pretty much decided that the most influential would be the first (makes sense). All I know is, it certainly wouldn't be something very recent.

Soviet Union.

Their action nearly caused Nuclear war, they split the world in two for 40 years. They were a super power and competed with another super power all other empires really lacked serious competition.

I mean modern examples will be the US with its Marshal Plan, and the CCCP with its huge influence on its satelite states (they're still trying to recover/catch up now. There's even a movie I think, of a country trying to delbierately fight and lose a war against the US to get the marshal plan) although people are now claiming that the EU is now the economic/government model America is adopting (who knows, history is being made now, and will be made later, when we see the results of whatever system we adopt). Japan is also a source of influence for the Asian Tigers, who adopted similar laws, economic strategies, etc, and with all the Weaboos here and the internet culture growing, I think it's a pretty big player.

I'm not saying we can make a definitive answer now, but it's always fun to speculate, and to have civilized discourse.

If it makes you feel any better I have the Akkadians at 2.

I really don't like that last paragraph (and that's probably why I don't like your post in general).  You think creating something isn't influential?  It doesn't matter if Romans spread a concept (although that's VERY debatable, the Greeks actually recorded a ton of stuff, so most people go directly to the source of the classics if they want to study them), it's still Greek thinking that's influencing everyone.  Is the Odyssey somehow Roman or even British because those were the civilizations that spread the story?  No.  It remains Greek.  Is Plato considered a Roman?  No.  The same holds true for inventions.  That's why I really think the only logical answer to this question is China.  China was centuries ahead of the west for millenia when it came to technology, and a good portion of that technology DID influence the West, especially in the centures leading up to the Renaissance.  At the same time, they exerted far more control, both culturaly and politcally, over the East than any civilization did over the West.