A01=Clive Ponting
america
ancient greece
asia
Author_Clive Ponting
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british empire
british history
carly simon
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Category=NHTB
china
economics
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exploration
fall and rise
geography
gideon rachman
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linda colley
marine biology
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nature
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tom holland
world history
world history books
Product details
- ISBN 9780712665728
- Weight: 1371g
- Dimensions: 153 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 04 Oct 2001
- Publisher: Vintage
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Conventional accounts of world history tend to focus on the rise of Western civilisation and concentrate on the story of ancient Greece, the Roman empire and the expansion of Europe. The histories of the great civilisations of China, India and Japan, and therefore the experience of the majority of the world's people, have been relegated to a minor place. World History adopts a radically different approach. Starting from the assumption that the human story has to be seen in the round, it examines the evolution of humans, their lives as hunters and gatherers and their eventual adoption of agriculture, before looking at the emergence of civilisation across the globe; in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica and Peru. It goes on to tell the story of the earliest empires, emphasising not just their differences but also their similarities. It explains how contacts were established between them and how technologies, ideas and the world's great religions travelled from one to another. It describes the great empires of Islam, of China and of the Mongols. Only towards the end of the story does Europe come slowly to dominate the world, against the background of technical innovations and social and economic change.
Clive Ponting is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea. His Green History of the World was a bestseller in many countries.
