This collection of essays by leading scholars of archaeology and prehistory examines the emergence of permanent human settlements and the social, political, and religious ideas that may have accompanied this development. Two introductory lectures sketch the emergence of man and his development as hunter, farmer, and fisherman. Then, taking civilization in its most precise sense, separate essays review the evolution of urban societies in the Near East, Europe, China, and Mesoamerica. Final lectures address the role of religion in early human societies, and the development of writing in the Old World. This disinguished and highly accessible collection will appeal to both the specialist and the interested general reader.
Reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics
The seventeen contributors to this interdisciplinary volume bring to the study of early China the analytical concerns of archeology, art history, botany, climatology, cultural and physical anthropology, ethnography, epigraphy, linguistics, metallurgy, and political and social history. Readers interested in such topics as the origin of rice or millet agriculture, the origin of writing, the nature of the trie, and the processes of state formation will find much value here. They will find, too, major hypotheses about teh cultural importance of ecogeographical zones in China, Neolithic interaction between the east coast and Central Plains, the remarkable homogeneity of early Chinese crania, and the links between the Hsia, Shang, and Chou dynasties. Relying on recently published archaeological evidence and the insights gained from carbon-14 and thermoluminescent datings, the authors provide original and significant interpretations of the nature of Chinese civilization in its formative stage and the processes by which civilizations form. Since there is little doubt that the complex of culture traits which defines Chinese civilization in the second and fist millennia B.C. developed from a Chinese Neolithic stage, the origin of the Chinese civilization is worth studying not only in its own right but as an instance of the indigenous development of civilizations in general. This volume will appeal to all who are intersted in the genesis of civilization and the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age; it summarizes that state of present knowledge about China and suggests research strategies and hypotheses for the future. Contributors:Noel BarnardK. C. ChangTe-Tzu ChangCheung Kwong-YueWayne H. FoggUrsula Martius FranklinMorton H. FriedW. W. HowellsLouisa G. Fitzgerald HuberKarl JettmarDavid N. KeightleyFang Kuei LiHui-Lin LiWilliam MeachamRichard PearsonE.G. PulleyblankRobert Orr Whyte This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.
The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur is a collection of literary letters between the Ur III monarchs and their high officials at the end of the third millennium B.C. The letters cover topics of royal authority and proper governance, defense of frontier regions, and the ultimate disintegration of the empire, and represent the largest corpus of Sumerian prose literature we possess. This long-awaited edition, based on extensive collation of almost all extant manuscripts, numbering over a hundred, includes detailed historical and literary analyses, and copious philological commentary. It entirely supersedes the author's oft-cited unpublished Yale dissertation of 1976.The included CD includes various photographs at high resolution of many of the tablets included in the study.
Chronologically traces the course of human history and civilization from prehistoric times to the present day, covering key events, people, inventions and discoveries, and ideas and beliefs.
2022 Reprint of the 1923 Illustrated Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Dr. Smith deals only with the most ancient, that is, the earliest Egyptians, and he traces their influence not only upon the civilization of Europe, but also, and in the first place, upon that of northern Africa and western Asia. To read him on this subject is indeed to be enlightened, and every historian must read with attention the remarkable conclusions to which he has been led by his experience in the dissection of mummies (gained in the course of his medical work at Cairo) in connection with the scientific archeological work of Dr. Reisner and his assistants in Lower Nubia. This monograph, in its second, hard-to-locate edition, proposes a connection between prehistoric monumental European sites and those of the Pyramid Age in Egypt. Using ethnicity as a basis, Smith ties the ancient peoples of Egypt to those of Syria and discusses how Egyptian culture spread from its point of origin. It is to Smith's "...lasting credit that he, first with an intuition transcending mere anatomy, perceived in Egypt the essential threads of primitive culture and civilization and out of them wove, on the loom of his genius, the tapestry of human history." Obituary, The British Medical Journal: Vol. 1, No. 3967 (Jan. 16, 1937), p. 149
