'Civilizations' takes the reader from the earliest days of human settlement to the civilisations of the New World overthrown by the Spanish conquistadors.
After a brief look at humanity's development as nomadic hunters and gatherers, the book opens with the crucial step taken around 10,000 years ago when some communities started to cultivate plants. The settled villages of these early farmers were the forerunners of the complex cities and highly sophisticated cultures that were later to flourish in the emergent civilisations across the world.
Focusing largely on the world's key civilisations in each time period, the book begins with primary civilisations in Mesopotamia, India, Egypt and China, and goes on to Greece, Rome and their contemporaries, culminating in the states of America.
Illustrated with stunning photographs, artworks and maps throughout, 'Civilizations' brings alive the ideas, events and people of earlier cultures whose achievements have laid the foundations of our present-day world.
