What makes civilization david wengrow

Sooner or later we all face death. Will a sense of meaning help us? Warren Ward. Philosophy of mind. Kristopher Nielsen. Rituals and celebrations. We need highly formal rituals in order to make life more democratic. Antone Martinho-Truswell. A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments.

The Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra performs at Palmyra in Photo courtesy Wikimedia. Archaeology Cosmopolitanism The ancient world. Aeon is not-for-profit and free for everyone Make a donation. Get Aeon straight to your inbox Join our newsletter.

Date: Summer-Fall From: Fides et Historia Vol. Publisher: The Conference on Faith and History. Document Type: Article. Length: 1, words. Lexile Measure: L.

Translate Article. This is what Wengrow does, most broadly by contrasting the hoary beliefs in sacral kingship against more modern beliefs in democratic republicanism, while suggesting how such apparently antithetical faiths share common, irrational roots. This is one of the best books I have read in the last year or so.

There is more meat here than in books twice its size. Points worth considering: The short comings of the Three Age System Differences and similarities in river valley cultures The way the collective interacts with the divine comparisons between Egyptian and Mesopotamian practice Dynastic cultures The uses of the ancient near east in the self conception of the modern west. I really can't recommend this book highly enough. It was great.

Tamara Agha-Jaffar. Author 6 books followers. In What Makes Civilization? The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West , David Wengrow argues the connections of Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt with the West go beyond the perception of the former as the birthplace of civilization.

He does this by dissolving the concept of distance and arguing that civilization consists of the exchange of culture between different societies. Part 1 of his book focuses on a discussion of metals, gems, food preparation, food cultivation, trade, currency, dwellings, and culture in the civilizations of the ancient Near East. Through detailed and concrete examples, Wengrow demonstrates that prehistoric and ancient societies did not exist in isolation of each other. They were interconnected and inter-related in spite of geographical distances.

His detailed and extensive analysis shows how the raw materials found in one location were consumed in a different location. He then demonstrates the similarities and differences in how the cultures tried to dissolve the distance between humans and gods. Part 2 focuses on dissolving the distance between the ancient Near East with modern European history by drawing parallels between a belief in sacral kingship with the modern institution of monarchy.

Rather, he sees strong evidence of cultural sharing between civilizations—both past and present. Recommended for its exploration of daily life in ancient Near East societies and for arguing for a fresh look at the meaning of civilization. Stephen Palmer. The aspect that I focus on most strongly is interaction: cultural transfers and exchange over large areas, the extent of which—even before the first writing systems and cities—is still surprising to many historians and social scientists.

New evidence for these networks and relationships is accumulating all the time. We can follow their growth through the flow of particular materials—metals, scented oils and woods, colored stone—and also particular practices from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean and beyond.

Whole areas that were once blanks on the archaeological map—Turkmenistan, the Iranian Plateau, Arabia—are now filled with evidence of walled cities and complex societies. These were connected to the river-based societies of the Indus, the Nile, and the Tigris and Euphrates, which we've known about for much longer. And who knows what remains to be discovered around the Horn of Africa, or what is being drowned forever beneath the waters of hydraulic dams in Sudan or Turkey.

Unfortunately, when archaeological sites and museums are looted and destroyed, we lose forever evidence of past connections between faraway regions and communities.

These very old connections were often completely forgotten in later periods of antiquity, but they nevertheless formed part of the fabric of Middle Eastern and African societies from the earliest times.

That's a very interesting question.