A01=Robert L. Kelly
activist
agriculture
ancient world
archaeologist
archaeology
arms race
Author_Robert L. Kelly
capitalism
Category=JHMC
Category=NHB
Category=NK
citizenship
communication
cultural history
culture
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
evidence
fifth beginning
global
globalization
government
history
history of culture
human development
human history
international
life changing
long term
modern world
nation states
politics
potential
society
technology
wartime
Product details
- ISBN 9780520293120
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2016
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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"I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow." This inscription in Tutankhamun's tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archeologist Robert Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that began about AD 1500. Some might call it "globalization," but the author places it in its larger context: a 5,000-year arms race, capitalism's global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network. Kelly predicts the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread appearance of world citizenship, and forms of cooperation that end nation-states' near-sacred status. It's the end of life, as we have known it.
However, this book and the author are cautiously optimistic: it dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity's great potential.
Robert L. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. He is a past president of the Society for American Archaeology, current editor of American Antiquity, author of The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers, and coauthor of two popular textbooks, Archaeology and Archaeology: Down to Earth. He has conducted archaeological research throughout the western United States for more than forty years.
