Alexander ranks high among those people in history who shaped the world as we know it. Before Alexander  civilization had been dominated by eastern cultures - Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians. Alexander shifted the spotlight once and for all and now on the western societies of the Romans and the Greeks would dominate history.

Using the gold reserves of the Persian kings and the resources of  his conquests Alexander built new cities and ports. Greek civilization and culture spread around the known world, improving trade and developing a new economic system. This  system began to take shape after Alexander's reign and remained virtually unchanged until the economic and cultural revolutions  of the 19th century.

More than that, Alexander set the limits of what men knew as the inhabited earth. This concept of the globe  would last until the voyages of the Portuguese and Spanish to the New World. From Alexander until Columbus Europeans were convinced that the world was defined by Alexander's conquests.