Civilizations

Civilizations

Author: Jane McIntosh

Publisher:

Published: 2003-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780563488897

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Civilizations takes the reader forward from the earliest days of human settlement to the civilizations of the New World overthrown by the Spanish Conquistadors.


A History of Civilizations

A History of Civilizations

Author: Fernand Braudel

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1995-04-01

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0140124896

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Written from a consciously anti-enthnocentric approach, this fascinating work is a survey of the civilizations of the modern world in terms of the broad sweep and continuities of history, rather than the "event-based" technique of most other texts.


The Evolution of Civilizations

The Evolution of Civilizations

Author: Carroll Quigley

Publisher: Indianapolis : Liberty Press

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13:

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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.


Making Civilizations

Making Civilizations

Author: Hans-Joachim Gehrke

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 2020-05-09

Total Pages: 1120

ISBN-13: 9780674047174

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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.


Energy and Civilization

Energy and Civilization

Author: Vaclav Smil

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 0262536161

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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.


Five Epochs of Civilization

Five Epochs of Civilization

Author: William McGaughey

Publisher: Thistlerose Publications

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 630

ISBN-13:

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Based on the idea that communication technologies are a primary shaping force of civilizations, "Five Epochs of Civilization" presents a new scheme of world history. It identifies five epochs of historical experience and associates each with a civilization focused on particular institutions. These are: -- Civilization I focused on government, ending in large political empires -- Civilization II focused on religion, ending in the three world religions -- Civilization III focused on commerce and education within the nation state -- Civilization IV focused on the media of news and entertainment -- Civilization V focused on the internet and beyond The communication technologies which triggered these changes in culture (and their approximate dates of introduction) include: ideographic writing (3100 B.C.), alphabetic writing (800 B.C.), printing (1450 A.D.), electronic recording and broadcasting (1920 A.D.), and computer networks (1990 A.D.). McGaughey includes separate narratives for each of the four civilizations that have appeared to date in a developed form plus 'imaginative and plausible speculations concerning a possible fifth, computer-based civilization'.


Ancient History

Ancient History

Author: John Morris Roberts

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 920

ISBN-13:

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"A fascinating and highly readable account of humankind's development over 10,000 years in a brilliantly illustrated volume by one of the world's most distinguished historians." -- Publisher's website.


The Rise of Civilization

The Rise of Civilization

Author: John Farndon

Publisher: Hungry Tomato ®

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13: 1541518802

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Take an enthralling journey from the Stone Age onward, and see how our ancestors became great builders and rulers. They grew food, discovered metals, made tools, and invented writing. You will see a mighty civilization in Egypt, wise Chinese philosophy, Maya culture in Central America, the colossal Roman Empire, and much more. Illustrated maps let you compare what is happening across the globe at various moments in time. While the Santorini volcano was wiping out the Minoan civilization, flushing toilets were being invented in the Indus Valley (Pakistan). The Greeks held the earliest Olympic Games while the Zapotec built pyramids in Mexico. Find out where it all started!


The Dawn of Everything

The Dawn of Everything

Author: David Graeber

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0374721106

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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