Worth listening too

it's very informative, well argued and fascinating really. You could have a book that last for days if you wanted to get into every aspect covered here. From the ancient Egyptians to the Mongals its five thousand years of human history, mostly around the Mediterranean, to be honest, thinking about it all I'm getting lost in my thoughts about it and this will turn into a massive ramble. It is definitely worth the credit and your time.
However there is an annoyance, the mid sentence bibliography quote. Your listening to it, imagining the scene and then get distracted by someone from Cambridge page such and such etc al!! maybe they could've been saved till the end. (This is not a reflection on the narrator)

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comprehensive sweep through time

The scope of learning and detailed references was sometimes a challenge but the dates, names and events were often balanced with amusing and surprising elements such as references to cats, chickens and the introduction of zero

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A superb challenge to civilisational assumptions

A highly enjoyable, thought-provoking challenge to long-established assumptions about the origins and rise of Western civilisation.

The core argument is that the dividing lines between cultures are fuzzy and porous, even over long distances, and going back far further than one might assume - and that the idea of Europe or "the West" as distinct from "the East", "Asia" or "Africa" is a far more recent concept than many might think.

Is this argument new? No. But it is superbly laid out here, drawing on a vast array of up-to-date evidence from archaeology, tree ring analysis, carbon dating, DNA testing, and much more - as well as an impressive range of primary documentary sources.

Despite the vast scope and timeline - the Persian invasions of Greece in the late 5th century BCE only arrives in chapter 15 of 30 - Quinn does a superb job of keeping the argument coherent and the pace brisk. This is rare for books covering this most ancient of histories, where the evidence is often scant - with the bigger picture connecting thread providing a coherence and focus that more traditional linear histories of these early civilisations often struggle to provide.

This means that for non-specialists this is extremely accessible and highly readable - probably the best introduction to ancient history I've encountered. For the more academically-inclined, copious endnotes point the way to much, much more detail.

Are there things to quibble with? Of course. Religion plays surprisingly little role. I'd also personally have preferred a bit more about travellers' tales and myths in shaping understandings of the world. I'd have been interested too to have more on the rise of intra-European national identities as a contrast to the macro-scale emergence of a sense of West versus East (or Christendom versus Islam), and how this played out during the Crusades in particular.

But that's what makes this such good fun - it's designed to provoke thought and discussion, and succeeds admirably. Having started out listening to the audiobook, halfway through I picked up a hard copy (the maps for each chapter really help, and the notes and index are invaluable), and I'll be re-reading and returning to this again and again to take it all in, and to find more areas to disagree with and explore.

A new favourite.

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1 person found this helpful