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The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History
The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History illustrates in a chronological series of maps, the evolution and flux of races in Europe, the Mediterranean area and the Near East. From 50,000 B.C. to the fourth century A.D., it is one of the most successful of the bestselling historical atlas series.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
Colin McEvedy
30 books9 followersColin Peter McEvedy was a British polymath scholar, psychiatrist, historian, demographer and non-fiction author.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 20, 2018
This book has been criticised for not being something else. If you want an in-depth history of the Egyptians, Hittites, Indo-Europeans or Romans, look elsewhere. This is a history of Europe as a whole (which includes the Near-East and North Africa) over a long period of time. For anyone who wants to understand the transition of the region AS A WHOLE from prehistory to history, it is excellent and almost unique.
It's not quite as good as its Medieval counterpart, but it's splendid nonetheless. It starts in the Ice Age and ends in 362AD, with Emperor Julian about to lead his legions against the Persians and with the Huns in Kazakhstan, looming ominously. It overlaps with the Medieval book, but should have overlapped a bit more in order to show the end of the classical world.
There are printing errors - a missed character on one map; Ireland disappearing briefly at the end of the Ice Age - but the story of the creation of our world is well told with McEvedy's trademark deftness and wit. Where else would the non-specialist learn about Sargon of Akkad, the Seleucids and the Tocharians - not to mention the linguistic development that made nearly every language from the Orkneys to the Indus related to each other?
This is a light, easy read that can be dipped into at any time for an easy, broad introduction to early history. Recommended.
It's not quite as good as its Medieval counterpart, but it's splendid nonetheless. It starts in the Ice Age and ends in 362AD, with Emperor Julian about to lead his legions against the Persians and with the Huns in Kazakhstan, looming ominously. It overlaps with the Medieval book, but should have overlapped a bit more in order to show the end of the classical world.
There are printing errors - a missed character on one map; Ireland disappearing briefly at the end of the Ice Age - but the story of the creation of our world is well told with McEvedy's trademark deftness and wit. Where else would the non-specialist learn about Sargon of Akkad, the Seleucids and the Tocharians - not to mention the linguistic development that made nearly every language from the Orkneys to the Indus related to each other?
This is a light, easy read that can be dipped into at any time for an easy, broad introduction to early history. Recommended.
April 13, 2022
8/10.
The best atlases display a wide swath of geographical and historical information in a visual manner. By doing so, they allow you to piece together events and put them in their proper world-historical perspective.
Ancient history is in special need of atlases. "Ur", "Babylon", "Antioch", "Cannae", and "Thermopylae" may ring bells in our minds (hopefully), but most of us cannot locate these places on a map. How did the size of Rome compare with the size of Alexander's Macedonia or with the Grecian dominance of the Mediterranean in 375 B.C.? How large were Judaea and Israel in comparison to the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires?
These are all questions that need answering for an understanding of ancient history, and McEvedy's maps and commentary provide great answers. Going from 50,000 B.C. to 362 A.D., McEvedy provides forty atlases of the European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern world, with the median time period in between atlases being 200 years. Most helpfully, McEvedy traces the history of races in this time period. The Semitic, Hamitic, Indo-European, Iranian, Western Hunter-Gatherer, and Mongolian peoples are defined and given special disambiguation by which one can track their progress over time.
I now realize that the biblical definition of race (Ham, Shem, and Japheth) was acknowledged by pre-1970 historians and classicists. Only the purposeful mists created by anti-European scholarship have obscured them. Hamites are northern Africans and stretch from the Moroccan coast to Egypt to northern Somalia. They then grade into Subsaharan Africans through Sudan. Semites are essentially Near Easterners, ranging from Sinai up to Syria and from the coast of Lebanon to the Persian gulf. Arabians are also included as Semites. Japtheths are the Indo-European race, those chariot-riding, sword-swinging, fast-advancing conquerors of Europe and India. As McEvedy readily acknowledges, "the Indo-Europeans are divided by philologists into two groups, Eastern and Western, with Teutons [descending from Scandinavia], Celto-Ligurians [ranging from France to Austria c. 1850 B.C.], Italics, and Illyrians [in modern-day Croatia]." The Eastern Indo-Europeans were called Thraco-Cimmerians, and in 1850 B.C. resided in the area from Thrace to Ukraine to Southern Russia. These people first invaded Greece around 1850 B.C. and secondly in 1200 B.C. (Dorian Invasion).
So, yes, the Greeks and Romans (descended from the Italics) were Indo-Europeans. They descended from the area of Southern Russia (see https[dot]//www[dot]wikiwand.com/en/Southern_Russia). Modern genetic evidence confirms this, showing how Northern Europeans have 90% Indo-European ancestry, Central Europeans have 60% IE ancestry, and Southern Europeans have 30% IE ancestry.
I recommend this book for all those interested in Early Western history. One must know one's roots to revive them today. Heroism, virtue, strength, courage, justice, wisdom — these shall you learn through the study of the classics. The decline and degeneracy of late-stage Rome shall teach you about why our society is declining today, the Greek philosophers will teach you how to dissect our media masters' propaganda, and Stoicism will teach you to be strong in times of external want. Look at Grecian statues and mold your own body after them. Harden the body, strengthen the mind, and become a man. Unite dream and day and say to the blackpill, "nay!".
The best atlases display a wide swath of geographical and historical information in a visual manner. By doing so, they allow you to piece together events and put them in their proper world-historical perspective.
Ancient history is in special need of atlases. "Ur", "Babylon", "Antioch", "Cannae", and "Thermopylae" may ring bells in our minds (hopefully), but most of us cannot locate these places on a map. How did the size of Rome compare with the size of Alexander's Macedonia or with the Grecian dominance of the Mediterranean in 375 B.C.? How large were Judaea and Israel in comparison to the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires?
These are all questions that need answering for an understanding of ancient history, and McEvedy's maps and commentary provide great answers. Going from 50,000 B.C. to 362 A.D., McEvedy provides forty atlases of the European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern world, with the median time period in between atlases being 200 years. Most helpfully, McEvedy traces the history of races in this time period. The Semitic, Hamitic, Indo-European, Iranian, Western Hunter-Gatherer, and Mongolian peoples are defined and given special disambiguation by which one can track their progress over time.
I now realize that the biblical definition of race (Ham, Shem, and Japheth) was acknowledged by pre-1970 historians and classicists. Only the purposeful mists created by anti-European scholarship have obscured them. Hamites are northern Africans and stretch from the Moroccan coast to Egypt to northern Somalia. They then grade into Subsaharan Africans through Sudan. Semites are essentially Near Easterners, ranging from Sinai up to Syria and from the coast of Lebanon to the Persian gulf. Arabians are also included as Semites. Japtheths are the Indo-European race, those chariot-riding, sword-swinging, fast-advancing conquerors of Europe and India. As McEvedy readily acknowledges, "the Indo-Europeans are divided by philologists into two groups, Eastern and Western, with Teutons [descending from Scandinavia], Celto-Ligurians [ranging from France to Austria c. 1850 B.C.], Italics, and Illyrians [in modern-day Croatia]." The Eastern Indo-Europeans were called Thraco-Cimmerians, and in 1850 B.C. resided in the area from Thrace to Ukraine to Southern Russia. These people first invaded Greece around 1850 B.C. and secondly in 1200 B.C. (Dorian Invasion).
So, yes, the Greeks and Romans (descended from the Italics) were Indo-Europeans. They descended from the area of Southern Russia (see https[dot]//www[dot]wikiwand.com/en/Southern_Russia). Modern genetic evidence confirms this, showing how Northern Europeans have 90% Indo-European ancestry, Central Europeans have 60% IE ancestry, and Southern Europeans have 30% IE ancestry.
I recommend this book for all those interested in Early Western history. One must know one's roots to revive them today. Heroism, virtue, strength, courage, justice, wisdom — these shall you learn through the study of the classics. The decline and degeneracy of late-stage Rome shall teach you about why our society is declining today, the Greek philosophers will teach you how to dissect our media masters' propaganda, and Stoicism will teach you to be strong in times of external want. Look at Grecian statues and mold your own body after them. Harden the body, strengthen the mind, and become a man. Unite dream and day and say to the blackpill, "nay!".
August 3, 2010
Reading an atlas from front to back has got to be the most bizzare pastime ever, but that's exactly what I'm finding myself doing. This atalas is incredibly well written, funny (how often do you say that about an atlas), and well researched. It covers important history concisely but accurately, given the limitations of the form.
If you want a quick reference guide to the ancient world and have an interest in the topic, an excellent read.
If you want a quick reference guide to the ancient world and have an interest in the topic, an excellent read.
January 2, 2013
Reading histories of the world one place, one era or one event at a time can be a bit maddening, as I am always wondering what was going on elsewhere in the world at the same time. This book treats the globe as an interconnected whole, with all the parts pushing and pulling on each other over the millennia. I use this, along with McEvedy's other historical atlases, as an invaluable reference when reading other history books. I would be lost without it!
McEvedy is also snarky and irreverent, so it's not only illuminating but entertaining to read. I laugh out loud at some of his comments, which can appear suddenly at the end of a more serious observation.
It's not comprehensive - it is about the interaction and movement of populations in Europe, the Near and Middle East, northern Africa and part of Asia - but he explains clearly and convincingly why he's framed this particular part of the globe. This is as important an element as the content of the maps themselves. It's a great starting point, a way to get to the heart of the matter so you have context for further reading on each briefly mentioned subject.
If you love maps and want to understand where the heck all these people came from, why they moved where they did and how each empire swelled and receded, then this book is for you. It is the heart of my growing history book collection and I'm sure it will be read again and again.
McEvedy is also snarky and irreverent, so it's not only illuminating but entertaining to read. I laugh out loud at some of his comments, which can appear suddenly at the end of a more serious observation.
It's not comprehensive - it is about the interaction and movement of populations in Europe, the Near and Middle East, northern Africa and part of Asia - but he explains clearly and convincingly why he's framed this particular part of the globe. This is as important an element as the content of the maps themselves. It's a great starting point, a way to get to the heart of the matter so you have context for further reading on each briefly mentioned subject.
If you love maps and want to understand where the heck all these people came from, why they moved where they did and how each empire swelled and receded, then this book is for you. It is the heart of my growing history book collection and I'm sure it will be read again and again.
October 27, 2020
An atlas I have used as a guide to my reading of The Great Sea...
March 27, 2019
Here's a Facebook post I wrote on February 8, 2017, while I was reading this book:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At a coworker's recommendation, I've been reading The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. It's a book of maps, essentially, with some commentary on the side. Each map shows the same region, but at a different period in time; there's one map on every odd-numbered page and you can almost treat the Atlas like a flipbook that shows the changes in civilizations over time.
This is great for me, because I love ancient history, but I've always had trouble keeping track of where/when everything was. Like, where exactly *were* the Hittites? Did their empire coexist alongside the Carthaginians? When did ancient Egypt start and when did it end?
So I'm finding this book super useful, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes ancient history, particularly if you have trouble keeping track of all the names and dates.
It's also just interesting to read in its own right. Like, normally, when people describe ancient civilizations, I hear them talking about one civilization at a time. In Latin class we learned about ancient Rome. In a class I took on the New Testament, we learned about ancient Israel. Both classes included details about their neighbors; it would be hard to understand those civilizations without understanding how they interacted with the peoples around them. But both classes (and most books I've run into) centered around a single civilization.
The Atlas, on the other hand, tells the history of all civilizations as a single cohesive story. And from that story, some patterns begin to emerge. The book has definitely been changing the way I think about the past.
For one thing, it's given me a different sense of the speed of history. I didn't realize quite how recent all the technology was. Humans didn't even arrive in Europe until around 40,000 BC. Agriculture (or at least "proto-agriculture") started around 9,000 BC. I knew both of those things; what I didn't know is that the Bronze Age only began around 3000 BC (approximately the same time as the advent or writing). I always thought of the Bronze Age as a fairly long, stable period in human history, but it only lasted 2000 years before the Iron Age started in 1000 BC. (Which seems incredibly late to me. We've only had iron-working for 3000 years!)
Also wrt the speed of history, we hear about civilizations like Egypt, or Assyria, or the Hittite empire. And we're told they lasted hundreds or thousands of years. So I always had this sense of civilizations back then as very long-lasting, stable sorts of things, where life didn't change too much from one century to the next. But actually, if you look at the map, the borders of these civilizations are constantly expanding and contracting. Sure, Ancient Egypt lasted thousands of years. But it ranged from a mighty empire to a small patch of land along the Nile. And the people who were in charge changed periodically as well. So it almost seems like a mistake to call it a single long-lasting civilization (rather than many civilizations that all used the same name).
And I dunno, it could be the flipbook nature of the Atlas that gives history this sense of speed. You flip from one page to the next and everything's changed. But I don't think I was aware, before this, how quickly civilizations shifted.
Another sense I get from this book is the inexorability of progress. By flipping through it, you get to see all these technologies radiating outward from the Near East into the surrounding areas. The Near East developed agriculture, and then it spread like a shock wave across the continents. The Near East learned to work copper, and you can see that spread too. Same with the Bronze and Iron Ages.
There are periodic dark ages; we're told that Egypt went through a few periods of chaos, and that literacy in Greece disappeared for a while after the Dorians invaded from the north. But when you look at the maps as a whole, the periods of darkness seem localized, and the progress as a whole never pauses or slows.
It almost creates a sense that progress is the natural state for humanity. We developed agriculture 10,000 years ago, and everything has been accelerating rapidly ever since then. Population has expanded, empires have grown larger and more all-encompassing, technologies have gotten more powerful. It gives a sense that... returning to a primitive way of life isn't natural; following the tide of progress is natural.
(I still love primitive skills and primitive ways of life, don't worry. This book just gives a sense that progress is the way things go, and that it always has been and always will be.)
One last thing before I conclude this post: I always thought of ancients living in towns (or at least tribes or villages) of a few hundred people a piece, but apparently this isn't the case. Apparently, people mostly lived fairly spread out, in individual homesteads rather than larger communities. When humans were hunters and gatherers, the land just couldn't support all that many people in one place. Agriculture started to change this; the increase in food meant you could have more people living in larger and larger towns. But it's surprising how late any "cities" appear. Apparently, ancient Egypt never had any; the Pharoah had his palace, but it wasn't a whole city; the people all lived spread out in the countryside. Mesopotamia had some "city-states", but in 2250 BC, these only had about 5000 people a piece. (In 2250 BC, the entire human population of the world was only 25 million.) By 1275 BC, the fertile crescent had about a dozen towns with more than 7500 people each. By 670 BC, you had larger cities; Nineveh (the capital of Assyria) had 30,000 people, and the city of Babylon had 15,000. But still, it's amazing to me how small cities were, and for how long.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking back, two years later, I think this book fundamentally changed how I viewed humanity's future. For the last four years I've been practicing primitive skills as a hobby, partly out of an interest in understanding past civilizations, but partly out of a belief that living as a hunter-gatherer or early agriculturalist was "more natural", and a better state for human beings, something that we should strive to return to. I think reading this book shattered all hope, for me, of returning to such a state; seeing all of history laid out in a clear straight line made it evident that progress marches in a certain direction, and that attempting to return to a previous state would be fighting hopelessly against the immense tides of history. We, as humans, may be unsuited for the pace and cognitive demands of modern life, but I no longer feel that returning to a previous era's lifestyle is the solution. The more I think about it, the more I believe that the only way out is through. (Either we will engineer ourselves a world more suited to our preferences, or we ourselves will evolve to become compatible with the world we've created.) Accordingly, ever since reading this book, I've decreased the prominence of primitive skills in my life. (Though it's not just because of this book; it's also because I moved away from the community in late 2016.)
Anyway, one final thing that I failed to include in my 2017 post: Although this book answered many questions I had about history, it also left me with some new questions.
One big question was: the book shows how the borders of empires changed, but doesn't explain how this actually affected the lives of the people in the regions. Did life basically go on as usual for the peasants living there, no matter which empire was ruling them? Or were they very much affected by the wars and by the cultural changes induced by new imperial masters? In the last two years, I've learned a little bit about this, but still don't have a clear answer.
Another big question was: this book shows the progression of history, but doesn't really explain *why* civilizations expanded the way they did. And so I was left wondering: what were the processes by which civilization came into being? How did we go from tiny towns to large empires? What needed to happen before walled cities could be created? What technology was missing, eight thousand years ago, that kept people from living in large civilizations? Was it simply that humans hadn't developed the necessary social structures yet? Were there technological constraints (such as constraints on how far food could be transported, or how productive a piece of land could be)? These are questions that have interested me greatly ever since I read this book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At a coworker's recommendation, I've been reading The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. It's a book of maps, essentially, with some commentary on the side. Each map shows the same region, but at a different period in time; there's one map on every odd-numbered page and you can almost treat the Atlas like a flipbook that shows the changes in civilizations over time.
This is great for me, because I love ancient history, but I've always had trouble keeping track of where/when everything was. Like, where exactly *were* the Hittites? Did their empire coexist alongside the Carthaginians? When did ancient Egypt start and when did it end?
So I'm finding this book super useful, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes ancient history, particularly if you have trouble keeping track of all the names and dates.
It's also just interesting to read in its own right. Like, normally, when people describe ancient civilizations, I hear them talking about one civilization at a time. In Latin class we learned about ancient Rome. In a class I took on the New Testament, we learned about ancient Israel. Both classes included details about their neighbors; it would be hard to understand those civilizations without understanding how they interacted with the peoples around them. But both classes (and most books I've run into) centered around a single civilization.
The Atlas, on the other hand, tells the history of all civilizations as a single cohesive story. And from that story, some patterns begin to emerge. The book has definitely been changing the way I think about the past.
For one thing, it's given me a different sense of the speed of history. I didn't realize quite how recent all the technology was. Humans didn't even arrive in Europe until around 40,000 BC. Agriculture (or at least "proto-agriculture") started around 9,000 BC. I knew both of those things; what I didn't know is that the Bronze Age only began around 3000 BC (approximately the same time as the advent or writing). I always thought of the Bronze Age as a fairly long, stable period in human history, but it only lasted 2000 years before the Iron Age started in 1000 BC. (Which seems incredibly late to me. We've only had iron-working for 3000 years!)
Also wrt the speed of history, we hear about civilizations like Egypt, or Assyria, or the Hittite empire. And we're told they lasted hundreds or thousands of years. So I always had this sense of civilizations back then as very long-lasting, stable sorts of things, where life didn't change too much from one century to the next. But actually, if you look at the map, the borders of these civilizations are constantly expanding and contracting. Sure, Ancient Egypt lasted thousands of years. But it ranged from a mighty empire to a small patch of land along the Nile. And the people who were in charge changed periodically as well. So it almost seems like a mistake to call it a single long-lasting civilization (rather than many civilizations that all used the same name).
And I dunno, it could be the flipbook nature of the Atlas that gives history this sense of speed. You flip from one page to the next and everything's changed. But I don't think I was aware, before this, how quickly civilizations shifted.
Another sense I get from this book is the inexorability of progress. By flipping through it, you get to see all these technologies radiating outward from the Near East into the surrounding areas. The Near East developed agriculture, and then it spread like a shock wave across the continents. The Near East learned to work copper, and you can see that spread too. Same with the Bronze and Iron Ages.
There are periodic dark ages; we're told that Egypt went through a few periods of chaos, and that literacy in Greece disappeared for a while after the Dorians invaded from the north. But when you look at the maps as a whole, the periods of darkness seem localized, and the progress as a whole never pauses or slows.
It almost creates a sense that progress is the natural state for humanity. We developed agriculture 10,000 years ago, and everything has been accelerating rapidly ever since then. Population has expanded, empires have grown larger and more all-encompassing, technologies have gotten more powerful. It gives a sense that... returning to a primitive way of life isn't natural; following the tide of progress is natural.
(I still love primitive skills and primitive ways of life, don't worry. This book just gives a sense that progress is the way things go, and that it always has been and always will be.)
One last thing before I conclude this post: I always thought of ancients living in towns (or at least tribes or villages) of a few hundred people a piece, but apparently this isn't the case. Apparently, people mostly lived fairly spread out, in individual homesteads rather than larger communities. When humans were hunters and gatherers, the land just couldn't support all that many people in one place. Agriculture started to change this; the increase in food meant you could have more people living in larger and larger towns. But it's surprising how late any "cities" appear. Apparently, ancient Egypt never had any; the Pharoah had his palace, but it wasn't a whole city; the people all lived spread out in the countryside. Mesopotamia had some "city-states", but in 2250 BC, these only had about 5000 people a piece. (In 2250 BC, the entire human population of the world was only 25 million.) By 1275 BC, the fertile crescent had about a dozen towns with more than 7500 people each. By 670 BC, you had larger cities; Nineveh (the capital of Assyria) had 30,000 people, and the city of Babylon had 15,000. But still, it's amazing to me how small cities were, and for how long.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking back, two years later, I think this book fundamentally changed how I viewed humanity's future. For the last four years I've been practicing primitive skills as a hobby, partly out of an interest in understanding past civilizations, but partly out of a belief that living as a hunter-gatherer or early agriculturalist was "more natural", and a better state for human beings, something that we should strive to return to. I think reading this book shattered all hope, for me, of returning to such a state; seeing all of history laid out in a clear straight line made it evident that progress marches in a certain direction, and that attempting to return to a previous state would be fighting hopelessly against the immense tides of history. We, as humans, may be unsuited for the pace and cognitive demands of modern life, but I no longer feel that returning to a previous era's lifestyle is the solution. The more I think about it, the more I believe that the only way out is through. (Either we will engineer ourselves a world more suited to our preferences, or we ourselves will evolve to become compatible with the world we've created.) Accordingly, ever since reading this book, I've decreased the prominence of primitive skills in my life. (Though it's not just because of this book; it's also because I moved away from the community in late 2016.)
Anyway, one final thing that I failed to include in my 2017 post: Although this book answered many questions I had about history, it also left me with some new questions.
One big question was: the book shows how the borders of empires changed, but doesn't explain how this actually affected the lives of the people in the regions. Did life basically go on as usual for the peasants living there, no matter which empire was ruling them? Or were they very much affected by the wars and by the cultural changes induced by new imperial masters? In the last two years, I've learned a little bit about this, but still don't have a clear answer.
Another big question was: this book shows the progression of history, but doesn't really explain *why* civilizations expanded the way they did. And so I was left wondering: what were the processes by which civilization came into being? How did we go from tiny towns to large empires? What needed to happen before walled cities could be created? What technology was missing, eight thousand years ago, that kept people from living in large civilizations? Was it simply that humans hadn't developed the necessary social structures yet? Were there technological constraints (such as constraints on how far food could be transported, or how productive a piece of land could be)? These are questions that have interested me greatly ever since I read this book.
April 30, 2019
"Read" is not really the appropriate verb for describing what I did with this book since it was mostly a matter of looking at maps rather than reading words. There are overviews of the latest developments accompanying each map, but they're fairly superficial and not the main draw of the book. One slightly misleading thing I noticed was that McEvedy states that the Avars were the same people who originated from the Rouran Khaganate as if this was a fact---but this is just speculation, we don't really know where the Avars came from. Anyway, the maps are the main thing, and the maps are good. The book is probably something you get more out of having available as a reference, rather than reading cover to cover.
October 16, 2012
Brilliant! Maps totally make a difference when visualizing the complex interactions of far-flung empires. Clearly, man is a creature of empire. It is as a second skin to him. The study of such large bodies of people found in nation-states and great earth-shaking political and cultural movements as the steppe-peoples should be foundational to any understanding of history. This book can help you decipher the sometimes complex interactions that take place at the same time over such a large area of Earth. It can help you to make sense of what may come to pass in the future as well. History repeats itself because we are the same humans with the same brain-capacity as those just trying to survive a hard winter in the tundras of Siberia or in the thick timbers of the northern forests. The same as Romans fighting the great general Hannibal to those that saw that sacrifice to the Sun God was the only way to bring the rains to keep a good harvest in the heart of Mesoamerica.
Understand your past and how the present came about from it.
Understand your past and how the present came about from it.
August 26, 2017
McEvedy, in his introduction to The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, confesses that "although there is no willfully unfair selection of facts, at times one can perhaps discern the subtle bouquet of prejudice." He continues in this opinionated vein in this Atlas of Ancient History. He kicks things off in the introduction with a hilarious rant against archeologists and a weird digression plotting a grid over the Mediterranean and performing a little iterative operation to reveal the "littoral zones"--the Aegean Sea, Sicily, etc--which somehow make civilization happen, or something. "History being a branch of the biological sciences its ultimate expression must be mathematical," he claims, though thank God this strange enthusiasm is not carried out in the text, which is fun and narrative.
March 10, 2008
This guy has a great talent for representing ancient and medieval states in a way that does not project our modern day precision about boundaries and frontiers backwards onto times where that world-view did not pertain. The monochrome nature of the maps can be off-putting—it lacks the vibrancy of the Times Atlas of World History for instance. But the singular understanding of Mr McEverdy (I don't think I am spelling it right)makes it ok.
September 21, 2009
Each page of text faces a page of map that shows the how language, war, culture and commodity moved through the middle east and Europe from 40,000 to 462 AD. For a visual person, its history told in a way I can remember.
October 20, 2022
This is a fun and informative book. The maps convey quite a bit of information. The text section that accompanies each map has very small print and can be frustrating. The text is very informative though. I used this in conjunction with Scott Chesworth's "The Ancient World" podcast. I recommend both. Spoiler alert! All empires eventually fall.
January 20, 2022
Colin McEvedy atlas are a synopsis of history, in this case, ancient history of the Mediterranean and Europe. He traces the rise of civilizations in Mesopotamia and then onwards to the culmination in the Roman Empire. I love historical geography so he gets a five stars for this work.
March 27, 2023
Glib writing, microscopic font, black and white maps. Atlases are hard to read anyway, but this book is less appealing than most.
June 1, 2014
This is obviously going to be a sprint through 40,000 years of human history, although the bulk of it takes place between 5500 B.C. and 362 A.D. The print is small and the text comes in three columns per page, so it actually took a bit longer to read than I had expected. I’m more of a visual learner, so the maps helped me put together the bits of information I already had in my head about the Minoans, Phoenecians, Tracians, Carthaginians, etc. It also explains trade routes, development (and sometimes decline) of literacy and the development of the alphabet, some migratory patterns, and key technological developments. Several pages are devoted to the Punic Wars.
The text sometimes displays a subtle humor, such as “The Mesolithic world is sometimes called impoverished because it lacked the glamour of the bison chase,” or “This has surprised the Egyptologists, who had been working with a date at least a century later. At the moment they are in denial.” And there is also one of the pithiest footnotes I’ve ever read: “2. Grammatologists call consonantal alphabets abjads. This seems too ugly a word ever to catch on.”
The text sometimes displays a subtle humor, such as “The Mesolithic world is sometimes called impoverished because it lacked the glamour of the bison chase,” or “This has surprised the Egyptologists, who had been working with a date at least a century later. At the moment they are in denial.” And there is also one of the pithiest footnotes I’ve ever read: “2. Grammatologists call consonantal alphabets abjads. This seems too ugly a word ever to catch on.”
December 16, 2013
Very good way to visualize the flow of history.
Must have for every history fan or people crazy about maps.
Must have for every history fan or people crazy about maps.
January 18, 2015
Alternate pages of text and maps, this book explains trade routes, wars and the changing borders of empires throughout ancient times.
October 15, 2019
İlgilenenler için çok kıymetli bir kaynak eser
November 21, 2007
Maps. Have some.
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