Europeans (and Chinese, etc.) have a lot more historical culture. Entire large and well-documented civilizations which have passed. US culture is basically independent of pre-Colombian American culture, and most pre-Colombian cultures are badly documented and understood compared to the Greeks, Romans, various Chinese dynasties, etc.
You might also consider various fine arts to be "dead", in that their peak point has passed. Not sure if I'd argue that, but it's clearer to argue that specific schools of art meet that definition. e.g. I don't think anyone will surpass Bach in organ music.
Modern European culture isn't the part that's dead, it's that there are also "dead" cultural artifacts in Europe, while the US was basically a clean slate. That's a plus for Europe in some ways, but in some ways actually helps the US -- having to create everything from scratch, taking the best (well, maybe) of other cultures, is itself interesting. Look at Singapore for another example.
So pretty much the most Christian developed country in the world is free of what you term 'Pre-Columbian' culture?
Christianity is a fusion of Greek, Roman and Jewish thought.
The founding fathers of the US were profoundly Christian. Their politics of the day was largely what made sense to ex-British subjects. The revolution of 1688 affects the US vastly.
US political systems were created built on thousands of years of European History. Prior to 1492 US history is European History.
The US has altered and changed the ideals and beliefs that the people who founded it started with but it was not a Blank Slate.
Just because Jerusalem and Rome are not in Ohio it doesn't mean they affect the US any less than they do Sweden.
I meant that the Aztecs, Maya, Inca, and other Native Americans are largely irrelevant to how US culture developed (which is I think your point), not that US culture is independent of everything which happened before Europeans came to the US.
"Pre-Columbian American culture" being that of the various Native Americans, not of the world in general pre-Columbus.
(I wish I could s/Colombian/Columbian; so easy to get those confused in various contexts)
I'm guessing the dead is as in deadweight --not contributory. For example, royalty and its traditions, its cultural baggage. The British still endure what's called "the Norman yoke". That is the Normas took over a culture and imposed it on the locals. This resulted in a sharp divide between the rulers (initially foreign royals) and locals (now landless and considered lower class commoners). This division is entrenched in British culture to this day.
Well, everything from any of the previous empires, for starters.
I dont mean to suggest Europe has little culture, but unlike the states, it also has a lot of dead culture. Culture that may still inform our identity, and of which relics and remainders are embedded in the fabric of everything. Yet it is dead culture: most of us not even capable of imaging how life would be in such a culture.
