Shand, John - Philosophy and philosophers: An introduction to Western philosophy

The past is not a story; only in retrospect under an interpretation does it unfold as history like a fictional tale in a book. Consequently, in reporting what happened in the past we lack one of the characteristics of a story: a definite beginning. However, in Greece a short time after 600 BC certain changes were taking place in human thought that seemed to have no precedent; and it is on these changes in the way human beings began to think about the world and themselves that the most fundamental aspects of today’s Western civilization—its science, ethics, politics, and philosophy—are founded. There were events of significance before this time; but 600 BC onwards marks alterations in human thought sufficient to describe it as a beginning.