Babylonian mathematics is said to have been more advanced than Greek mathematics ever was in some respects. Not only did they come up with some advanced practical techniques, like solving quadratic and cubic equations, but their numerical concepts were generally more advanced (Greeks mostly busied themselves with geometry). Some of the Babylonian knowledge reached Greece and influenced Greek astronomy and mathematics, but ideas didn't spread as readily then as they do now, so many of these impressive advances were forgotten and are only known now thanks to archeological discoveries and deciphering of clay tablets.

https://www.livius.org/articles/misc/persian-influence-on-greek-culture/

Generally I find such pop-culturology totally without merit. The usual procedure is to pick two stereotypes about a culture - or an entire civilization, as in this case - and weave a thin ad hoc narrative to "explain" one in terms of the other.

Or, why not the Greeks?

My off-the-cuff guess is that most well developed cultures (and the Greeks were not the only one) experience episodes of literary and philosophical high achievement. What makes these episodes enduring is that they get transmitted to succeeding cultures. Greek heritage passed to the Roman Empire. Had the Greeks been swamped by some horse-riding horde indifferent to Greek culture, we probably wouldn't be talking about Aristotle.

On the other hand, it seems to take felicitous combinations of conditions to produce high culture: literacy and numeracy; a minimum of stability over enough time; sufficient prosperity to afford speculative thought; a tolerant state; a sufficiently large and interested public to support and sustain cultural achievement, and so on.

The Greeks were high achievers. They were special. They were at 'the head of the class'. Other cultures could have been contenders but were less fortunate.

What makes these episodes enduring is that they get transmitted to succeeding cultures. Had the Greeks been swamped by some horse-riding horde indifferent to Greek culture, we probably wouldn't be talking about Aristotle. — Bitter Crank

Yes, this is an important point. We don't even know what was lost without a trace - the Greek civilization was very fortunate in that respect. Babylonian civilization was influential too, and it left behind lots of very durable clay tablets (most still waiting to be analyzed), and the Babylonian script was deciphered, so at least now we can take stock of their achievements. Minoan civilization was also highly advanced, but it was more isolated, and Minoan script still hasn't been deciphered. Other civilizations were even less fortunate in what they transmitted and what they left behind.

I like BitterCrank's hypothesis, which can be boiled down to "Because of the Romans". The Romans adored Greek culture and transmitted it to their colonies, which covered most of the countries that a thousand years later went on to colonise much of the world, and thus spread the Greek influence further.

Perhaps the same answer can also serve for the question "Why Christianity" (why is it the world's largest religion).

Why the Greeks? — Jacob-B

It's not so much a question of "why the Greeks", as it is a question of "why the Athenians", in my opinion. Yes, I know that the Milesian school, the pythagoreans and the Eleatics (to name a few) precede the Athenian period, but the sustained interest in philosophy certainly had Athens as a center. The reason Athens was such a center of philosophical activity seems to stem from the link to the goddess Athena, who was regarded as the patron of philosophy. As such, philosophy and philosophers in general held a special place within Athenian society.

OK, but why was there a god/goddess of philosophy in the Egyptian, Sumerian, or Indian pantheon.
I think the reason might be that free thinking was not possible under the rulers and clergy of those cultures.

Ahhh, Athens -- home of the 30 tyrants, the death penalty for teaching the youth to think, and leader of free thought in the ancient world.

That makes sense.

Why let facts get in the way of a half-assed "theory"?

Why the Greeks? They wrote our history books.

it because athens culture and government encouraged more freedom of thought than many other nations at the time.

Like how spartan culture and government encouraged creating the best army.

https://www.amazon.com/Source-Book-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/0691019649

This book is pretty good if you want to read about chinese philosophy.

I also recommend some books on indian philosophy if you want to read more in non-western philosophy.

This veneration of 'the Greeks' is very cultural, very 'Western Europe classical education'. Vast amounts of paintings, plays and poems have been derived from Greek and Greco-Roman myths, and they have long been held up in the schools (particularly British public schools) as the Golden Age of art and philosophy - even the idea of a Golden Age being Greek. But in fact the corpus of Greek philosophy doesn't make anything like as big a contribution as the venerators would have you believe. Aristotle's Ethics are all about the social acceptance or non-acceptance of the man-about-town; Kant's Categorical Imperative would have bewildered him. Plato's Republic is the first great Fascist tract. The 'Academy' was a garden in Athens where small numbers of people used to meet. Only a few sentences of Democritus have survived, and his arguments about Atom and Void are interesting, but they are hardly nuclear physics or cosmology.
As SophistiCat has correctly pointed out, the Babylonians were much better at maths, they knew more than Euclid did, and in fact human civilisation first went past the lost mathematics of the Babylonians in the Enlightenment. 'Pythagoras's theorem' of geometry isn't by Pythagoras at all, it's Babylonian, as was all of the foundational material that the Pythagoreans contributed to the development of Greek geometry, and they got it from the Persians.
Furthermore, the lost books of 'the Greeks' were mainly transmitted to modern Europe via the great Muslim civilisation of the early medieval era, via such melting pots as the Sicilian Norman kingdom of Roger II. The great Caliphate of Baghdad under Haroun al-Rashid and his successors produced some of the finest works of science and philosophy ever written before modern times, far outstripping their Greek influences - at a time when the Europeans were a pack of Christian savages.
Don't believe the propaganda. 'The Greeks' were a small group living in Athens during a period of about 50 to 100 years; Greek culture, language and belief spans a huge timescale from the Mycenaean conquest of the Agean from the Cretans, through the Alexandrian Asian Greco-Buddhist kingdoms of Bactria and Gandhara, important for Buddhist philosophy, to the thousand years of Eastern Orthodox Christian Byzantium, which contributed nothing to philosophy at all. It is certainly true that the Late Bronze Age Babylonians and the Islamic Golden Age scholars were more important than 'the Greeks', for reasons of astronomy as well as maths and philosophy. I can't think of anything at all that I find important in modern science and philosophy that was said by a Greek; contrariwise, where do you think 'algebra' comes from? Just because the word 'metaphysics' comes from Greece doesn't mean that Greek metaphysics is important, while there is a very good reason for so many of the stars in the night sky having Arabic names like Betelgeuse.
I went to a British public school that venerated 'the Greeks', and today I have as much contempt for that veneration as I have for so much of the British public school system. Americans have inherited that tradition. It is a false one. I recommend you drop it.

Well. aristoteles and Plato survived to tell them the story Would have done so under the Pharaohs
or Ashurbanipal? Absolute Tyranny was the rule in Middle Eastern Kingdoms, it was an exception in Athens.