, by Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia, by Sir Barry Cunliffe
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, by Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia, by Sir Barry Cunliffe
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By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering over 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century AD. An unashamedly 'big history', it charts the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the growing links between them by way of the Indian Ocean, the silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor (which crucially allowed horse riders to travel from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain within a year). Along the way, it is also the story of the rise and fall of empires, the development of maritime trade, and the shattering impact of predatory nomads on their urbanneighbours. Above all, as this immense historical panorama unfolds, we begin to see in clearer focus those basic underlying factors - the acquisitive nature of humanity, the differing environments in which people live, and the dislocating effect of even slight climatic variation - which have driven change throughout the ages, and which help us better understand our world today.
, by Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia, by Sir Barry Cunliffe- Amazon Sales Rank: #151614 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-09-24
- Released on: 2015-09-24
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review "Cunliffe is a master storyteller, explaining his carefully researched conclusions through polished language and apropos turns of phrase that make his book a breeze despite its depth and breadth." --Publishers Weekly
"In tracing the rise of Eurasian civilization, Cunliffe makes clear that history is much more than just one thing after another. As migrations and conquests pile up in the book, it becomes apparent that a dizzying array of forces interacted to produce the modern world." --Science News"By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia by Barry Cunliffe is a pathbreaking attempt to enhance understanding of Eurasia by means of a reconsideration of focus, scale, time frame, and sources."-Stewart Gordon, H-NetAbout the Author Sir Barry Cunliffe taught archaeology in the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been President of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is currently a Commissioner of English Heritage. His many publications include The Ancient Celts (1997), Facing the Ocean (2001), The Druids: A Very Short Introduction (2010), and Britain Begins (2012), all also published by Oxford University Press. He received a knighthood in 2006.
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Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful. A grand narrative in the old style, incorporating the most recent scholarship. It's looooong, but a good read. Superb maps. By lyndonbrecht This is a brilliant summary of something like 10,000 years--a long summary, and a bit slow in spots. The sheer length, almost 500 pages, may deter some readers. It took me most of the day today. Readers interested in specific topics might find particular chapters more rewarding than reading the whole thing. Cunliffe is one of the grand old men/ women of archaeology in the past fifty years, so this book brings in some archaeology and other aspects of scholarship. It also has a lengthy guide to further reading.The photographs are very good, though mostly of landscapes to get a sort of mood of them, as well as of some art objects and sites. There are lots of maps, and these are highly readable, and pleasantly, are located in the sections where the text discusses them, rather than in a section at the front where so many works have them. The maps are, well, the best I have seen in a grand survey such as this. In a sense a major theme is also the possibilities posed by environmental parameters, so environment is constantly in the background (as is geography). This is a grand narrative history of the kind not much written these days.The central theme of the book is how the steppe has been a connector between the Europe and the general Middle East/ Persian area in the west and China in the east. There's some discussion of India, but South and Southeast Asia is mostly unmentioned. There's also a little of Africa--Egypt, the Muslim regions of the Maghrib, and Axum, but mostly the continent is unmentioned, too. The focus really is Eurasia. The extensive sections on the steppe are the best I have read anywhere, even if group after group, leader after leader, state after state, empire after empire gets a bit confusing.The steppe has been a cultural highway, and among its passengers have been domestication of the horse, the idea of the chariot, artistic trends, religions, crops, the plague, pilgrims, diplomats and pillaging armies. However, some of the text concerns events in the more developed regions such as the long confrontations between the Romans/ Byzantines and the various empires based in Iran; the book is quite good on these, There's also a lot of Chinese history. Bothe these can be a bit tedious but reading about them in parallel so to speak helps one realize the continuity and connectedness of it all, rather than the usual consideration in isolation of each other.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Well worth reading By Priscilla Manwaring Any book by Barry Cunliffe is worth reading because of his wide expertise in archaeology. He is also a skillful writer. This book is especially interesting because it deals with the Silk Road and all the cultures it touched. There is much information on China and Mongolia with which most non-specialist readers will not be familiar as well as more familiar, but well-presented material, on the Levant, Greece, and Rome.Russia, and the various steppe cultures. One especially valuable part of this book is the annotated bibliography at the end.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Terrific Wide Angle History By Anne Mills This is an exemplary work of history by one of the greats of modern archaeology, and a real pleasure to read. In broad historic terms, Sir Barry shakes the kaleidoscope through which world (or at least Eurasian) history is viewed, from a series of discrete eras to a very long term view, and from a series of individual cultures to the way in which those cultures were tied together by the steppes. The writing is clear and graceful, the illustrations beautiful and instructive, and the maps spectacularly good.For an American or European reader, the traditional view of Eurasian history is that of one center of civilization giving way to another (the Fertile Crescent, the Mediterranean, Northern Europe), a sort of updated Whig version of history that culminates with "the west". Instead, Sir Barry concentrates on the steppes. For millennia, groups of people have moved westward over the steppes, putting pressure on other groups and, at the end of the line, on urbanized cultures. That has affected the urbanized cultures (in many cases, it has overthrown them) but it has also tied them together, allowing communication and trade between distant centers. The author examines this process from very early on, as the mesolithic edged into the neolithic, with a detailed look at the geography of Eurasia, and proceeds up to the beginning of the modern era. As he moves forward through time, he looks at the people of the steppes themselves, and at their interactions with other cultures.If this sounds like a lot of information, it is. It's tempting to say that Sir Barry gives us a new way of looking at world history, but it's not accurate: this isn't world history: it excludes the whole western hemisphere, most of Africa, and much of non-Chinese Asia. But his book is enormously enlightening on broad trends, and on specific patterns as well -- I had no idea that central Asian cultures were so highly evolved before the Mongol invasions. It's a lot of information, but also a lot of analysis, and analysis that does not seem aimed at other academics. My only problem with the book is the title: for a book that's 90% steppe-focussed, it's a bit misleading. But that's a quibble. For anyone who loves broad brush history with splendid detailing, this is a must read.
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