Download or read book Making Civilizations written by Hans-Joachim Gehrke and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-05-09 with total page 1120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the History of the World series, Making Civilizations traces the origins of large-scale organized human societies. Led by archaeologist Hans-Joachim Gehrke, a distinguished group of scholars lays out latest findings about Neanderthals, the Agrarian Revolution, the founding of imperial China, the world of Western classical antiquity, and more.
Download or read book What Makes Civilization written by David Wengrow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'What Makes Civilization?', archaeologist David Wengrow provides a vivid account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (today's Iraq). These two regions, where many foundations of modern life were laid, are usually treated in isolation. Now, they are brought together within a unified history.
Download or read book The Aegean Civilizations written by Peter M. Warren and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the "lost" cultures of Crete and Mycenae which antedated the Classical period by a thousand years and more. Covers the prehistory of the area from Neolithic times (6500 B.C.) to the collapse of the Mycenaean Empire c. 1200 B.C.
Download or read book The Evolution of Civilizations written by Carroll Quigley and published by Indianapolis : Liberty Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on students. Like the course, The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels from the abstract to the more concrete. He then tests those hypotheses by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western. Quigley defines a civilization as "a producing society with an instrument of expansion." A civilization's decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution--that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.
Download or read book The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order written by Linklater, Andrew and published by Bristol University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-18 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of civilization recurs frequently in reflections on international politics. However, International Relations academic writings on civilization have failed to acknowledge the major 20th-century analysis that examined the processes through which Europeans came to regard themselves as uniquely civilized – Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization. This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the significance of Elias’s reflections on civilization for International Relations. It explains the working principles of an Eliasian, or process-sociological, approach to civilization and the global order and demonstrates how the interdependencies between state-formation, colonialism and an emergent international society shaped the European 'civilizing process'.
Download or read book Energy and Civilization written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Download or read book The Making of Civilization written by Ruth Whitehouse and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1986 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dirt written by David R. Montgomery and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Download or read book Pottery making Cultures and Indian Civilization written by Baidyanath Saraswati and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 1978 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Is An Unusual Exploration Into India S Timeless Civilization By An Enthropologist Who Has Devoted Six Years To Extensive Survey Of The Peasant Potters Of More Than Half Of India. The Author Of This Book , Writes Professor N.K. Bose , Has Applied Some Methods In The Study Of Indian Culture Which&. Have Not Been Used By Any Other Student Of Cultural Anthropology In This Country. His Method Of Correlation Of Material Culture With The Total Cultural System Marks A Departure From The Conventional Studies Of Cultural Processes. He Has Suggested New Methods Of Reconstructing History, And His Data On Contemporary Pottery Making Afford A Reassessment Of Indian Archaeological Materials.The Author S Extensive Experience With Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry Yields Insight. From A Detailed Analysis Of The Ethnographic Data On Pottery Making, He Makes Some Significant Observations: There Is Continuity In Potter-Craft Tradition In India, Traceable From The Pre-Historic Times. The Survival Of The Ethnic Groups Of Potters, Well Within Their Respective Technological Zones Of Pre-Historic Pottery Making, Makes The Aryanization Of India Doubtful. Different Regions Of India Have Evolved Their Own Indigenous Cultures Providing Extreme Diversity To The Material Base Of Indian Society-Their Unity Lies In The Basic Philosophy Of Life, In The Higher Forms Of Culture. To An Average Indian, The Diversity Of Cultures-Food, Dress, Language, Worship-Does Not Really Matter, So Long As He Believes That Every Way Of Life Has Its Own Contribution To Humanity, And That Before The Inexorable Law Of Nature, Every Being Has An Equal Right To Survive Through The Full Course Of Its Cosmic Life. This Idealization Of Diversity Has Helped India Develop A Tradition Of Tolerance, Which Is The Soul Of Her Civilization.Apart From Its Contribution To Anthropology, The Book Will Be Of Particular Interest To Historians Of Culture And Philosophers Of Social History
Download or read book How Can We Begin to Create a New Civilization written by Luis Razeto Migliaro and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history and in different parts of the world many civilizations with different features have been created. Civilizations have been of various sizes; some very large, others small. Real people have created them, men and women like us, through activities and theoretical and practical processes that we can identify through the study of history. If we look beyond the differences between them, we can learn quite clearly what a civilization is, its foundations and its pillars, its main structures and the elements that shape it. And we can also discover when a civilization declines and tends to disappear, how and when the need to create a new civilization arises, and what are the initiatives and activities deployed by what kind of people and groups that begin its creation. All this knowledge about past civilizations, applied to the present reality, allows us to say that we are living today a historical phase in which our civilization is in organic crisis and has started to decay, while the initiatives and activities tending to create a superior civilization begin to unfold to replace it. The historical knowledge of past civilizations and of the present modern civilization, from its inception, development, consolidation and crisis, can greatly facilitate the theoretical and practical action of those who today intend to lay the foundations and begin the creation of a new and superior civilization that will open human experience to new and broader horizons. In this small volume I propose to synthesize all these ideas and to express them in an accessible language to anyone who may be interested.
Download or read book The Dawn of Everything written by David Graeber and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations
Download or read book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order written by Samuel P. Huntington and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-05-31 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in today’s geopolitical climate—with a foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication in 1996, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations pose the greatest threat to world peace, but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia have changed global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify inter-civilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. In his incisive analysis, Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, multi-civilizational world.
Download or read book Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America written by Frank Joseph and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-21 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The examination of four great civilizations that existed before Columbus’s arrival in North America offers evidence of sustained contact between the Old and New Worlds • Describes the cultural splendor, political might, and incredibly advanced technology of these precursors to our modern age • Shows that North America’s first civilization, the Adena, was sparked by ancient Kelts from Western Europe and explores links between Hopewell Mound Builders and prehistoric Japanese seafarers Before Rome ruled the Classical World, gleaming stone pyramids stood amid smoking iron foundries from North America’s Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. On its east bank, across from today’s St. Louis, Missouri, flourished a walled city more populous than London was one thousand years ago, with a pyramid larger--at its base--than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. During the 12th century, hydraulic engineers laid out a massive irrigation network spanning the American Southwest that, if laid end to end, would stretch from Phoenix, Arizona, to the Canadian border. On a scale to match, they built a five-mile-wide dam from ten million cubic yards of rock. While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, a metropolis of weirdly shaped, multistory superstructures, precisely aligned to the sun and moon, sprawled across the New Mexico Desert. Who was responsible for such colossal achievements? Where did their mysterious builders come from, and what became of them? These are some of the questions investigated by Frank Joseph in his examination of ancient influences at work on our continent. He reveals that modern civilization is not the first to arise in North America but was preceded instead by four high cultures that rose and fell over the past three thousand years: the Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian, and Anasazi-Hohokam. How they achieved greatness and why they vanished so completely are the intriguing enigmas explored by this unconventional prehistory of our country, Advanced Civilizations of Prehistoric America.
Download or read book Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio written by Amara Lakhous and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The immigrant tenants of a building in Rome offer skewed accounts of a murder in this prize-winning satire by the Algerian-born Italian author (Publishers Weekly). Piazza Vittorio is home to a polyglot community of immigrants who have come to Rome from all over the world. But when a tenant is murdered in the building’s elevator, the delicate balance is thrown into disarray. As each of the victim’s neighbors is questioned by the police, readers are offered an all-access pass into the most colorful neighborhood in contemporary Rome. With language as colorful as the neighborhood it describes, each character takes his or her turn “giving evidence.” Their various stories reveal much about the drama of racial identity and the anxieties of a life spent on society’s margins, but also bring to life the hilarious imbroglios of this melting pot Italian culture. “Their frequently wild testimony teases out intriguing psychological and social insight alongside a playful whodunit plot.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Civilizations written by Jane McIntosh and published by . This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civilizations takes the reader forward from the earliest days of human settlement to the civilizations of the New World overthrown by the Spanish Conquistadors.
Download or read book Empires and Encounters written by Wolfgang Reinhard and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1350 and 1750 the world reached a tipping point of global connectedness. In this volume of the acclaimed series A History of the World, noted international scholars examine five critical geographical areas where exploration and empire building led to expanding interaction--early signals on every continent of a shrinking globe.
Download or read book Ancient Civilizations of Africa written by Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa and published by London : Heinemann Educational Books ; Berkeley : University of California Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: V.1. Methodology and African prehistory -- v.2. Ancient civilizations of Africa -- v.3. Africa from the seventh to the eleventh century -- v.4. Africa from the twelfth to the sixteenth century -- v.5. Africa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century -- v.6. The nineteenth century until the 1880s -- v.7. Africa under foreign domination 1880-1935 -- v.8. Africa since 1935.
