Originally posted by Eric R.

Now you see it is easy to use cultures and transplant them into space, its an easy way to get a quick culture and at the same time have your players easily grab on. If American Woodland culture continued little changed on another world it was transplanted to why would Greek culture not do the same, the only difference being that Greeks continued to come up with new things those new things would eventually lead to a modernized ancient culture much like China & Eygpt is today, essentually its ancient self but only with machines running around. At the same time the barbarian invasions has so changed Italian culture that it has very little real connection with its Roman past.
I also don't agree that the Centaurans are, as PG put it, Greeks in Space (tm)...partially because that would be too easy, and short the Centaurans of a unique culture. Of course, there is no real canon information to support anything (the only real info is "Zephram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri," and that's been modified by STFC...I don't think there's been any treatment of the race anywhere else).

I patterned the Cent's after the book Crisis on Centaurus, which is the only real difinitive work that I've seen on the planet. They made it a very modern, established culture that was fully ingrained in Federation "culture." This means that, like much of Earth, local culture in the big cities has been supplanted by the much larger Federation pseudo-culture (due to a probably massive Starfleet and Federation government presence there). Modern Centaurans may have minor connections to their ancient cultures (like Scotty does to his Highland ancestry...or, say a Japanese native would to his family's 800-year old katana and the samurai heritage it represented, etc.), but, for the most part, they are part of the Federation super-culture.

That's how I see them, at least. As far as developing the character stats, I actually went with the version of the race that was converted primarily from the Icon TNG core book.