西方文明文化基因的形成和塑造经历了一个漫长的历史进程，大致上可以划分为三个历史阶段。11—14 世纪是西方文化基因的雏形阶段，文艺复兴时期是西方文化基因的发展阶段，这两个历史阶段都属于文化借用期。西方人大规模借用古希腊的文化概念、文化意象，借用古罗马和拜占庭的法律术语甚至法律体系，借用东方文明和伊斯兰文明的技术文化，通过挪用、吸收、改造和重组这些文化因素，再结合不断演化和再创造的日耳曼传统文化因素，塑造出理性主义、基督教和个人主义三大文化基因。近代早期是西方文化基因的成熟阶段，也是西方文明的文化创造阶段，这一时期西方开始创造属于自己的文化。

西方文明, 文化史, 文化基因, 文化借用

When the Western civilization originated in the 11th and 12th centuries, it could be said to be culturally barren and desolate. The formation and shaping of its cultural genes had gone through a long historical process which could be roughly divided into three historical phases. The 11th-14th centuries were the embryonic stage of the formation of the Western cultural genes. The Renaissance was the stage of the development of the Western culture. These two historical phases belonged to the period of cultural borrowing, with large-scale borrowing of the cultural concepts and cultural imagery of ancient Greece, the legal terminology and even the legal system of ancient Rome and Byzantium, and the technological culture of the Oriental civilization and the Islamic civilization. Three major cultural genes, namely, rationalism, christianity and individualism, were shaped by appropriating, absorbing, transforming and restructuring these cultural factors, and by combining them with the evolving and re-created cultural factors of the Germanic traditions. The early modern period was the stage of maturation of Western culture and the stage of cultural creation of Western civilization, which began to create its own culture.