Among the earliest examples of sculptural art are representations of the human figure, like the 25,000-year-old Willendorf Venus discovered in Austria in 1908. In western art, fascination with portraiture and anatomical realism were features of the earliest sculptures around the Mediterranean, from Nefertiti and King Tut to Roman emperors and Greek gods. This important volume—the…
Many books about ancient Chinese history are written for those already in the know; there is a dearth of accessible narratives for the general reader. Happily, Andrew Meyer’s new book fills this gap. He skilfully recounts the Warring States Period (ca 470-221 BC), a chaotic era that followed the “slow moving crisis” of the Springs-and-Autumns…
The norm in Chinese political thought for two thousand years has been, to quote Mencius, that “there cannot be two suns in the sky, nor two kings on earth.” Since only one faction can claim the Mandate of Heaven, there is no tolerance for rival claimants, nor for the notion that Chinese territory could be…
The story of Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island, contains all the irresistibly exotic ingredients of a compelling story: Thor Heyerdahl’s daring voyages, mystical origin myths, Spanish conquistadores, scholarly rivalries, rumours of ritualised sexuality, and the brooding presence of monumental stone statues. For two centuries these ingredients have fed an extraordinary range of theories,…
Today, Afghanistan—if it ever reaches global headlines—is portrayed as an unstable land, known more for the wars great powers fight (and often lose) on its territory. Yet for most of human history, Afghanistan wasn’t on the margins of civilizations, but a cultural hub in its own right.
The importance of archaeological developments can take a long time to register in the general public consciousness. This is perhaps because excavations take years, results are often published long after the work begins, the significance is not immediately apparent, or conclusions are denied when they run counter to conventional narratives. Keeladi, near Madurai, is a…
In few countries is the contrast between buried riches and visible squalor as great as in Afghanistan. Ancient towns like Balkh and Ghazna present scenes of desolation which belie the wonderful objects and architectural elements that archaeologists have recovered from them. Other rich sites, like Ai Khanum, lie below the surface of a featureless plain….
The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, never one to shrink from a challenge, visited Gobustan in Azerbaijan for two decades to prove his theory that the ancestors of today’s Scandinavians left behind the mysterious rock carvings near Baku. Uncanny similarities between petroglyphs showing the long, oared boats of Caspian seafarers and those of the Vikings, and…
In 1923, archaeologist Leonard Woolley stumbled upon a room that dated back to 530BC, the time of the Babylonians. Oddly, the room was filled with artifacts that were thousands of years older. A clay drum led Woolley to speculate that he might have stumbled across the world’s first museum.
Mesopotamia is having a moment. Moudhy Al-Rashid’s Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History, joins among others Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000-Year History of Iraq by Bartle Bull, The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present by Allen James Fromherz…
English. French. Italian. Hindi. Greek. Russian. All these different languages can trace their roots to the same origin: Proto-Indo-European, spoken in 4000 BC in the steppe that crosses from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Whether by migration, diffusion or conquest, the Indo-European languages spread west across Europe, east across Central Asia, and southeast towards India.
If you only read one book by the prolific and (now) venerable John Man, it should perhaps be this one, literally so for it “revises and condenses” several chapters in his other books Genghis Khan, The Terracotta Army, Barbarians at the Wall, The Great Wall and Xanadu. It is, as one might expect from Man,…
Few subjects have progressed as rapidly in recent years as the study of prehistory and ancient history. The ability to decode the human genome has upended everything. In retrospect, archaeologists and linguists got an amazing amount right; the advent of DNA analysis (backed up by huge amounts of computing power) provided a layer of scientific…
Geographic labels are sometimes misnomers. The Dead Sea’s name is not, for the most part. Its high salinity levels kill most forms of life, barring a couple hardy microbes and algae—and even these are threatened by environmental change. Except the Dead Sea has been part of human history for millennia. Jericho, the world’s oldest city,…
Quite a lot of archaeological water, to say nothing of history writing, has flowed under the bridge since Early Southeast Asia’s first edition in 2014.