Style and Civilizations PDF Download

Author: Alfred Louis Kroeber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN:
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 204

View

Book Description

Author: Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743216504
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

View

Book Description
In Civilizations, Felipe Fernández-Armesto once again proves himself a brilliantly original historian, capable of large-minded and comprehensive works; here he redefines the subject that has fascinated historians from Thucydides to Gibbon to Spengler to Fernand Braudel: the nature of civilization. To Fernández-Armesto, a civilization is "civilized in direct proportion to its distance, its difference from the unmodified natural environment"...by its taming and warping of climate, geography, and ecology. The same impersonal forces that put an ocean between Africa and India, a river delta in Mesopotamia, or a 2,000-mile-long mountain range in South America have created the mold from which humanity has fashioned its own wildly differing cultures. In a grand tradition that is certain to evoke comparisons to the great historical taxonomies, each chapter of Civilizations connects the world of the ecologist and geographer to a panorama of cultural history. In Civilizations, the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not merely a Christian allegory, but a testament to the thousand-year-long deforestation of the trees that once covered 90 percent of the European mainland. The Indian Ocean has served as the world's greatest trading highway for millennia not merely because of cultural imperatives, but because the regular monsoon winds blow one way in the summer and the other in the winter. In the words of the author, "Unlike previous attempts to write the comparative history of civilizations, it is arranged environment by environment, rather than period by period, or society by society." Thus, seventeen distinct habitats serve as jumping-off points for a series of brilliant set-piece comparisons; thus, tundra civilizations from Ice Age Europe are linked with the Inuit of the Pacific Northwest; and the Mississippi mound-builders and the deforesters of eleventh-century Europe are both understood as civilizations built on woodlands. Here, of course, are the familiar riverine civilizations of Mesopotamia and China, of the Indus and the Nile; but also highland civilizations from the Inca to New Guinea; island cultures from Minoan Crete to Polynesia to Renaissance Venice; maritime civilizations of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea...even the Bushmen of Southern Africa are seen through a lens provided by the desert civilizations of Chaco Canyon. More, here are fascinating stories, brilliantly told -- of the voyages of Chinese admiral Chen Ho and Portuguese commodore Vasco da Gama, of the Great Khan and the Great Zimbabwe. Here are Hesiod's tract on maritime trade in the early Aegean and the most up-to-date genetics of seed crops. Erudite, wide-ranging, a work of dazzling scholarship written with extraordinary flair, Civilizations is a remarkable achievement...a tour de force by a brilliant scholar.

Author: Bruce G. Trigger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521822459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 784

View

Book Description
Sample Text

Author: Stephen Blaha
Publisher: Pingree-Hill Publishing
ISBN: 0972079572
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
"The Rhythms of History" presents a quantitative theory of civilizations supported by the data in Toynbee's classic 12-volume "A Study of History."

Author: Alfred Louis Kroeber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 191

View

Book Description

Author: David R. Montgomery
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520933168
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 299

View

Book Description
Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

Author: Matthew Melko
Publisher: Porter Sargent Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

View

Book Description

Author: Stephen Blaha
Publisher: Pingree-Hill Publishing
ISBN: 0972079580
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 213

View

Book Description
This book is an expanded version of The Rhythms of History, the book that made macro-History into a semi-quantitative Science. New features include: 1. an appendix showing how the history of Mayan civilization conforms to the book''s Theory of Civilizations including the latest information from the newly discovered hieroglyphic texts at Dos Pilas, Guatemala; 2. an appendix on the sub-Saharan African civilization, Great Zimbabwe, showing it fits the theory; 3. a comparison of the theory with Toynbee''s observations showing the many new features resulting from a quantitative theory; 4. numerous historic pictures and illustrations of the civilizations of Mankind including a number of newly found pictures from the nineteenth century; 5. a chapter describing the potentially disturbing implications of patterns in civilizations - Are we free? ? and the implications for the Philosophy of History; and 6. expanded comments in many sections such as the sections on the future of Humanity, the role of China, and the Islamic - West conflict. The book begins with a hard hitting, "tell it like it is" chapter on the current international situation with statements such as: "The United States and Western civilization is now engaged in a small Vietnam-style war on a global scale at the time of this writing. This war is still in the early stages of development. ... The attack on the World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists may have the same significance for Western civilization that the Gothic invasion of Rome itself in the prime of the Empire (the First Century AD) had for the future of Rome. They may be a premonition of things to come - not necessarily soon but perhaps in a few centuries. The Goths returned three centuries later and remained as permanent conquerors. ... Over the long term the West must free itself from a dependence on Muslim oil. Muslim oil revenues are the fuel for the development of weapons of mass destruction by Iran and Iraq. In the future they will supply the revenues of an expansionist Islam. ... As the silk trade looted the Roman Empire of its gold and reduced its economy, the trade in oil is looting the West of its prosperity and freedom of action. The rise and fall of oil prices has a significantly greater effect on the American and world economy than the raising and lowering of interest rates by central banks. " The book then describes a theory of civilizations that led to these observations. Currently unfolding events seem to be fulfilling the predictions which were made last year (including the new North Korean threat that seems to be consistent with a predicted breakdown in Japan ? North Korea will create major problems with Japan. As this is being written Japan is moving Aegis destroyers nearer to North Korea and preparing for defense.) THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THIS BOOK, AND ITS PREDECESSOR, APPEAR TO BE HAPPENING AS PREDICTED LAST YEAR. According to Theory of Civilizations the basis of civilizations was laid with a genetic mutation (found by Ding et al) 40,000 years ago that created bold enterprising individuals who became the leadership group of civilizations: a group that Toynbee called the "creative minority." When the world''s climate became warmer and more stable 10,000 years ago the seeds of civilizations began to germinate. Thus the origin of civilizations is tied to human genetics. The book then shows that a long-term social behavior pattern of mankind (based on four generation trends) causes civilizations to develop and "oscillate" in patterns of routs and rallies. Civilizations rise and fall due to their internal human dynamics. The theory of civilization is developed using equations and 68 diagrams that show a close detailed match between the theory and the actual history of all known Asian, European and African civilizations over the last 5,500 years. The theory projects the future of today''s civilizations (including the future of Western and Islamic civilizations). It also successfully describes the interaction of barbarians and civilizations, the interaction of two civilizations, the impact of modern technology on civilizations (it accounts for the Luddite reaction to the Industrial Revolution), the impact of major environmental events on civilizations (e.g. the collapse of Minoan civilization due to a volcanic eruption), and the disintegration of civilizations. It also accounts for the tremendous growth phases seen in many civilizations such as the building of the great pyramids in Egyptian civilizations. Based on the theory fifteen new civilizations are identified including new prehistoric Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. Having shown the success of the theory for earth civilizations it considers the form of extraterrestrial civilizations and calculates their impact on Western civilization should contact be established. The book also shows the need for the colonization of space and nearby planets if mankind is to progress in the future. The book analyzes the impact of the lengthening life spans of mankind on the future of civilizations. Predictions are made for the "state of the world" for 2050 and 2100. A detailed understanding the past enables the theory of civilizations to make predictions for the future. Defining Progress to be the sum of the world''s civilizations the book shows that Progress seems to be approximately linearly increasing over the last 5,500 years. A plot of Progress appears on the book''s cover (shown on this web page) together with the contributions of each civilization to Progress. (The vertical order of the civilizations in the plot is arbitrary. Older civilizations tend to be lower in the plot.) The book is a tour de force that makes History a Science rather than a collection of random events. It is the first detailed mathematical treatment of history. Although the book contains mathematics it is intended for the general reader as well as the mathematically inclined. There are copious verbal descriptions of the theory as well as many figures plotting the theory versus historical events. A qualitative, descriptive theory of civilizations is also presented that is like a "Dow Theory of Civilizations."

Author: Amos Dean
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description

Author: René Grousset
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430

View

Book Description