Studying the demise of historic civilisations

There is greco or more expansively greco-roman civilization that we adopted, but that doesn't make us part of the greco-roman civilization or a "western civilization". No more than japan adopting bits of chinese civilization makes japan "chinese civilization".

If you think western civilization exists, then there must be an eastern civilization? There is no such thing, other than for convenient geopolitical purposes. There is the chinese civilization, the indian civilization, the myriad of middle eastern, northern african civilizations, etc. But no such thing as an eastern civilation.

Were the chinese, persian, mongol, ottoman, etc empires part of an "eastern civilization"? Of course not.

The idea of a western civilization is a geopolitical concept we invented for political purposes and of course to claim "civilization" for ourselves. To claim we are a part of the greco-roman civilization when we are not part of it. We are adoptees of it. "Western civilization" is ultimately a sneaky way of claiming civilization status for ourselves.

Having said that, I may be a bit biased, but given the cultural, societal, global, linguistic, financial, systematic, military, etc impact we've had, I think the US has moved from an empire to an actual civilization. But ultimately, history confers the status of civilization, not the living. So maybe in a few hundred years, historians will say the US is an actual civilization. But for certain, 500 years, nobody is going to talk of anything called a "western civilization". It simply doesn't exist just like an "eastern civilization doesn't exist.

The 'fuzziness' is just a consequence of your (and the article's, and some comments, but by no means everybody's) idiosyncratic usage: by treating 'Byzantine empire' and 'Byzantine civilization' as if they were interchangeable terms, then you have to explain that civilization on the Bosporus did not end with the fall of Constantinople, as you did a couple of posts ago. If, however, you stick with the usage that is preferred by a ratio of 50:1, then the fuzziness and potential confusion goes away, as then you would be using two distinct terms for two distinct concepts.

Your last paragraph is a non-sequitur, as the issue is not whether 'civilization' just means urbanism here, but whether it means the same thing as 'empire'.

What we can say is that chinese civilization came into existence a long time ago. Then a serious of dynasty ( some not even "chinese" ) like the mongols or the manchus adopted aspects of chinese civilation.

"China" itself didn't survive for thousands of years. The dynasties rose and collapsed. Conquered and got conquered.

And "china", for much of its history, didn't even speak the same language. They used the chinese writing system ( which also evolved through time ), but does a writing system entail "part of civilization". Koreans and Japanese used chinese writing system, does it mean they are part of the chinese civilization? Of course not. Much of africa uses latin alphabet, does that mean africa is part of "greco-roman" civilization? Of course not.

The chinese capital changed multiple times. There have been periods where "china" had multiple competing capitals.

But then you could argue that chinese civilization didn't die out or get supplanted like the egyptian, mayan, mesopatamian, etc civizations.

The more you think about it and the closer you look, the more blurry the situation becomes. But like most things history, I guess the best answer is "it's complicated".

By that definition, we have expanded the looting in the last century by several factors of magnitude. In that context, we should also view the global economy as a single empire.

There is no such person. Speciation isn't some quick and dramatic happening, it's a generally slow evolution (though a lot faster for things like bacteria). "Species" is just how biologists categorize things, but organisms are continually evolving to some extent, so if you grab some random humans from 1M years ago, and compare them to random humans today, you'll find some pretty significant differences most likely, even if it is possible for them all to interbreed. If you go back even farther, the differences will be greater, you might not be able to interbreed, but there's no clear delineation if you look at humans and their ancestors over the course of the last ~5M years, just a slow progression. Our modern biologists/anthropologists make up names for the beings from various select points in time, since they do differ markedly from beings at other far-removed points in time, but we don't have a clear picture anyway because all we have is fossils which don't show a clear picture, they're just select points in time where we got lucky and were able to find an artifact.