By the way, at what point in history do you stop calling a civilization ancient? I would say a civilization is not ancient if it came after the fall of the West Roman Empire, but is there an official time, or is it based on opinion?
Sorry for the double post.

@hey: They fell before the spanish arrived but indeed they were a very interesting civilisation. Unfortunately they cultural heritage almost totally destroyed by westerns, except the stone buildings.

@Urfang:
That map is horrible: just because you use the Greek alphabet does not make your illustration "cool" or anything (especially not if you throw in an "L"). Also, what on Earth is "blbps?onil"...!?

@John:
Haven't you been paying attention; it flew to the Pegasus galaxy and then sank. They got themselves destroyed by an enemy they themselves created. Hardly a candidate for anyone's "favourite" civilisation I'd think. :p

@OP:
Whichever civilisation built the Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon. Note: not the original name, but to the best of my knowledge, all records about that entire civilisation have been utterly lost; those two pyramids (technically: ziggurats) are their only remaining legacy.
Just to put everything into perspective, even the Aztecs, quite accomplished monument builders themselves, were impressed with these structures... so much so that they figured those pyramids must've been built by the Gods.
Yes, the Great Pyramid of Giza is larger, but I like whoever they were for, on the one hand, constructing an incredibly big monument, but on the other hand managing to disappear without a trace; gotta love a good mystery!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_the_Sun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_the_Moon

@hey Modern age started in 1492 when Cristoforo Colombo discovered America; this is not my opinion but it is like a convention that historians have chosen.

Favourite civilization of course is the Roman Empire, but since I live in Rome and I am a very expert (at amatorials level) of that historical period my prefernce is pretty forced.

I list "Ancient" as from the beggining of history until the end of the Roman empire in 476. I myself is very interested in all of history, and know quite a lot of it. I have to say Ancient Greece and Rome are by far the most interesting of these empires (city states for Greece's case).

I define "ancient" as anything before Alexander's Greece. Then, I call it "Classical" or "Antiquity" until the fall of Rome in 476 AD. The period after, I consider the "Dark Ages" or "Middle Ages," until the fall of Constantinople in the mid-1400s. Afterwards, I consider it the Early Modern era until the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. Industrial Era, to me, lasts to 1945, the end of WWII. From then on, I consider it the Modern Era, which to me, we are still currently in.

History is awesome! :D

I dislike the Roman Empire for them ripping off of the Greeks...
Their religion was never original, first they took the Greek gods and changed their names, then they changed to the Ottoman/Holy Roman Empire, which took Christianity as its official religion....
Also, they did not do anything to contribute...
Architecture; Took from the Greeks
Colosseum; A very nicely designed building, however the purpose was could have been better.
Religion; Already mentioned that...

Basically the only things they contributed was the Latin language, (very nice), the formation of a Senate, and Aqueducts...

Putting that into context with the Greeks or the Chinese, and their empires....the Romans seem puny.

THEY ARE ONLY REMEMBERED FOR MAKING THE BIGGEST EMPIRE IN THE WORLD!!!

Other than that...they are nothing.

When in truth, the Roman Empire was far from the largest empire in the world. The largest empire the world has ever seen was the Mongol Empire, then the British Empire, then the Russian Empire.

Well, yep while the romans had their flaws (rip offs of greeks) they did have a lot of good ideas. They had a great army system that is still in use (somewhat) today, had a fairly good governemt system (if the emperor was good), and had a language that influenced dozens of languages today.

I think Rome was the greatest empire for several reasons.

INVENTIONS: Even though they did not invent much, they were masters at taking other peoples' inventions and implementing them at a grand scale. This can be seen with aqueducts, sewers, war machines, and public buildings.

RELIGION: As far as religion goes, they worshipped gods from all over the empire and beyond. They were so cosmopolitan that they did not need their own gods and were VERY religiously tolerant. In this case we can take lessons from them in today's society

MILITARY: The Romans had a very organized military. They were also very adaptable. This can be seen in the Punic Wars with Carthage when they adapted their infantry to fight the elephants in the Carthaginian army. They also adapted to crush the Greek hoplite formation. When germanic tribes overran the country, they adapted their tactics so that they could fight from large fortresses.

PEACE: During and after the reign of Augustus, the Meditteranean world had a full TWO HUNDRED YEARS of peace. During this time the mediterranean was cleared of pirates. Cities did not need walls for the first time in history. This was only broken because of civil wars between generals.

LEGACY: Since the fall of the Roman Empire, no nation has been able to rule the entire meditteranean. Without Rome, Western culture would undoubtably be much poorer.

Sorry for rambling

Well, since most of us agree that the romans were our favorites, who about we change this to your favorite middle age empire?

To those who are wondering what defines "ancient", Oxford historians refer to anything after Constantine I became Roman Emperor (in 306) as being "modern history", and everything before as "antiquity".

Me personally I like Aksum, mainly because although they were not militarily powerful, they were the biggest trading empire of the ancient world, facilitating trade between southern Africa (ivory, animals), India (spices), China (silk), and personally mining gold to be sold to various empires; probably the most underrated civilization in history

@Komrade
The British empire was larger than the Mongol empire.

All of you keep talking about rome. Please research the Persian empire through the ages. We beat rome many times :D

I like the 'we' bit there Reza, as if you had a hand in the battles.

Note that every nation lost battles at some point or another. It's rather meaningless. Hannibal absolutely owned Roman forces and yet Carthage still lost the war and was relegated to a minor footnote in the great history of the world.

A bit off topic, but recently I found some interesting theories about aaaaaancient colonization of Europe, from people that came from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean islands, in a book written by such a Felice Vinci,which begins by explaining why Troy is not in Turkey and ends to connect the people from the civilization of ancient Greeks, Mycenaean, Veda indians, previous British and other ... Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

@Moros:

Thanks for the correction, but the Mongol Empire was still the largest contiguous empire, correct?

My favorite empire was the Assyrian Empire. Hundreds of years before Rome and quite a bit before the Persian Empre, too. Definitely one of the smallest empires, but also one of the first. The Assyrians were also the first in the area (Ancient Near East) to have an organized army.

Oh, kind of like where the Babylonians were? The Babylonians also preceded many of the great civilizations we all also know and love. They were BOSS builders, and those Hanging Gardens... a marvel of human architecture BC.