0
0
Support the library.
Your support helps keep books free for everyone ❤️
📍 Noticed
What Is Ancient History?
by Walter Scheidel
Sponsored
Synopsis
From one of today’s most innovative ancient historians, a provocative new vision of why ancient history matters—and why it needs to be told in a radically different, global way
It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on ...
It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on ...
From one of today’s most innovative ancient historians, a provocative new vision of why ancient history matters—and why it needs to be told in a radically different, global way
It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity’s pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.
For Scheidel, ancient history is when the earliest versions of today’s ways of life were created and spread—from farming, mining, and engineering to housing and transportation, cities and government, writing and belief systems. Transforming the planet, this process unfolded all over the world, in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, often at different times, sometimes haltingly but ultimately unstoppably. Yet it’s rarely studied or taught that way. Since the eighteenth century, Western intellectuals have dismembered the ancient world, driven not only by their quest for professional expertise but also by nationalism, colonialism, racism, and the idealization of Greece and Rome. Specialized scholarship has fractured into numerous academic niches, obscuring broader patterns and dynamics and keeping us from understanding just how much humanity has long had in common.
The time has come, Scheidel argues, to put the ancient world back together—by moving beyond the limitations of Greco-Roman “classics,” by systematically comparing ancient societies, and by exploring early exchanges and connections between them. The time has come, in other words, for an ancient history for everyone.
You May Also Like
Escape This Book! Titanic
Bill Doyle
Dark Demon Knights
A. Kirk
Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—And How You Can, Too
Ijeoma Oluo
Deadly Hollywood: Lost Souls, Broken Paths, and Tragic Ends in Hollywood's Golden Age (Dark Side of Hollywood)
Keli Noury
Quédate conmigo...
Anna García
The Story of All Stories: A Story Bible for Young Catholics (Ages 7–13) – Catholic Children’s Bible Storybook for Learning Scripture, Catholic Faith ... from Saints, Popes, and Church Fathers
Emily Stimpson Chapman