kuzumel reviewed What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West on + 112 more book reviews
I came across this book while trying to find out what was going on in the world at the beginning of Chinese civilization. So the question posed by the title led me to read this book - twice. The second time was after some further readings in two very different interpretations of pre-Vedic India and a couple of books on what was known about the Levant.
Maybe some of Wengrow's writing is an educated extrapolation of the increasing mounds of physical evidence that humans need interaction with The Others to build the complex web of social, economic, religious, and martial relations that is civilization. Life has always been interconnected, and more so after you read this book. Which is why I read it the second time.
In short, the most interesting aspect of this book is that Wengrovw tries to shed the "modern and Western is superior" bias and show that what we have today is the legacy of many cultures passed down through 7000+ years of human civilizations influencing each other, across half the planet - maybe more widely than we think. What does Sir George and the Dragon have to do with the lapis lazuli mines in modern Afghanistan - then a colony of the Indus Valley civilization? And what does any of that have to do with Ancient Egytian fashion fads or tombs?
Read the book.
Maybe some of Wengrow's writing is an educated extrapolation of the increasing mounds of physical evidence that humans need interaction with The Others to build the complex web of social, economic, religious, and martial relations that is civilization. Life has always been interconnected, and more so after you read this book. Which is why I read it the second time.
In short, the most interesting aspect of this book is that Wengrovw tries to shed the "modern and Western is superior" bias and show that what we have today is the legacy of many cultures passed down through 7000+ years of human civilizations influencing each other, across half the planet - maybe more widely than we think. What does Sir George and the Dragon have to do with the lapis lazuli mines in modern Afghanistan - then a colony of the Indus Valley civilization? And what does any of that have to do with Ancient Egytian fashion fads or tombs?
Read the book.
