What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West Reprint Edition

I've been taking grad courses in American history, and there's a lot of debate about when the 'market revolution' occurred. This book makes it clear that in many ways, it's absurd to create such a category at all. If you did, you might have to start thousands of years BCE!The book's primary theses are:1. Capitalism, including its psychological impacts like anomie and Lucascian 'reification', and its physical manifestations like cities and international trade routes, began in the ancient prehistorical Neolithic (early Stone) and early Bronze Ages.2. A universal temporal 'track' or progression of civilization identified by many a historical/ political theorist is nonsense. Techniques and technology are *spatially* contingent. Early trading civilizations were interdependent, with different nations manifesting different 'marks of civilization' *concurrently*, with all benefiting from the resulting diversity. Highland miner-shepherds brought precious metals to the markets of lowland farmer-fishermen. Here the author echoes Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"If you're not well versed in this period of history (like me!), this is an incredibly accessible and friendly book. The maps are simple and effective. The author's anti-orientalist chapter(s) at the end (modern cultural uses of the 'mystic orient' icon) have a slapdash, last-minute character. But *because* of that afterthought quality, you can easily bifurcate them from the rest of the book and focus on the goods.

What Makes Civilization? pretty much says it all right there in the title.The author, Prof. David Wengrow, is a Comparative Anthropologist at University College London. What Prof. Wengrow had produced is a reasonably accessible introduction to the oft maligned, but necessary, concept of civilization.What is civilization? Who is civilized [watch out for this one]? What constitutes civilization and why? These are some of the many questions asked and mostly answered.The short answer seems to be urban culture [life in cities] and the author does not add much new to this notion, but for those puzzling over the question and new to the area this is an excellent contemporary primer.Highly Recommended for those with an interest in history, ancient history, urban history, cultural and material archaeology, and the academic debate concerning the nature of civilization, especially now that civilization has moved into the post-post-colonial period this is a good place to get started.Rating: 5 out of 5 starsFor a discussion of the merits of Leviathan [the State or civilization] readers might also wish to read Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature.

A much quicker read than I expected, but it was insightful,

very interesting book, ancient cultures and what they believe and how it drove their understanding of the world around them. thank you

Writing style is not lucid. Have to keep going back and forth. Reading and rereading to understand what the author is trying to say. The chapter headings and subheadings and paragraphs contained thereinI am disappointed. Reads like a high school essay. Wikipedia articles are better written and interesting. Did not find anything much informative about civilizaton. I am disappointed.Short book and too expensive

Buena defensa de la interconexión entre civilizaciones en el tercer y cuarto milenio antes de Cristo. Cuestiona que el mundo occidental pueda pretender que su origen institucional provenga de ese Oriente Cercano. Colección de información muy interesante sobre las primeras civilizaciones.

Essential reading for those curious about the origins of urbanisation and ‘complex societies’.I found Wengrow’s erudite book a lot more satisfying and thought-provoking than the recent BBC series which discussed Civilisations from an art-history rather than archaeological perspective.The book is clearly written and seems to be aimed at a general, rather than specialist, readership.Highly recommended.

This is a stimulating and provocative book written by an Archeologist with a grounding in Anthropology.The text is divided into two parts.He starts by giving an account of the material and ecological conditions leading to the emergence of civilisation in the Near East i.e.the cradle of civilisation in Mesopotamia and Egypt.Great emphasis is given to the continuities between the earlier pre-urban non literate societies and the latter organised literate states.Counteracting vigorously the prevalent 'isolationist' theories from H Frankfort to S Huntington,he demonstrates the permeability of these civilisations to outside influences with cultural borrowings and extensive trade exchanges.A dense web of connections interlinked them through more peripheral 'bridging' societies, to satisfy their insatiable need for exotic commodities particularly timber,gems, metals and incense .The text offers insightful accounts of the practice of sealing transportable goods, of the inventorial function of early writing systems as well as the role of dynastic kingship and it's interaction with the divine.The second part is rather whimsical, as he indulges in philosophical musings about the ambivalent legacy of the Ancient Near East as received by modern Europe.On the one hand he maintains the fundamental otherness of these civilisations to the modern post revolutionary European mind with it's rejection of sacred kingship and the dynastic cult of the dead.On the other hand he asserts that Antiquity and Modernity are cut from the same cloth, and by idealising civilisation "are we not raising up new gods where old ones have fallen?" Is this another way of stating that there are historical continuities with the organised hierarchical states of the past as well as profound differences in terms of the value systems buttressing our secular economical and political institutions.But are these values worthy of any sacrifices and to be preserved at all costs just for the sake of living in stable orderly societies? Controversial conclusion if I understood him rightly.I still give him 4 stars because of the excellent scholarship he brings to the subject in the first part.

Well written and informative.