Conventional accounts of world history focus on the rise of western civilisation and 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.
Adopting a radically different approach, this book starts 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, their eventual adoption of agriculture, and the emergence of civilisation across the globe: in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus valley, Mesoamerica and Peru. It tells the story of the earliest empires, emphasising their differences and their similarities. It explains how contacts were established, 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. Slowly, Europe dominated the world, against the background of technical innovations and social and economic change. In the twenty-first century, this European dominance is passing away.
Here is a truly global sweep, a history of the world for the new century.
