Some ancient roman highways still exist even up to this day, not to mention how useful those were for centuries after Romans "left". That's just the simplest example i could come up with.
I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "had little effect in the end", but i hope you can very carefully elaborate on that point.
The point I responded to was
If we accept that the roman empire jumpstarted civilisation in Europe, then it's Itally.
When saying that the Romans jumpstarted civilization in Europe, that implies that their civilisation was preserved and expanded upon. That is not what happened at all though. When the Roman Empire fell, the invading tribes were not able to continue at a similar civilizational level. In fact the entire Roman legacy was pretty much lost and Europe got plunged back into tribal society. It took Western Europe almost a thousand years to get architecture, trading, law, manufacturing, literacy and science to a level beyond what they were in Roman times.
So the jumpstart had little effect, because all progress was lost for a long time, atleast until the Carolingian Renaissance. Sure highways remained and proved useful, but that is not really a continuation of the same level of cilivisation, cause they were not able to recreate them or even maintain them.