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Title: Legacy: The Search for Ancient Cultures by Michael Wood ISBN: 0-7881-9460-7 Publisher: DIANE Publishing Co Pub. Date: June, 1992 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $17.00

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Summary: Timeless topic
Comment: Michael Wood has put together in this small volume entitled 'Legacy: The Search for Ancient Cultures', a wonderful survey of the first civilisations to arise in human culture, and their enduring legacy for us today. It deals with cultures that arose across the globe -- so many prehistorical and ancient historical texts concentrate almost exclusively on the Fertile Crescent of five thousand years ago, to the exclusion of city cultures that arose in the Indus Valley, China, and the Americas.

The first city cultures (from which our civilisation ultimately derives in large part) arose largely independently of each other, in what are present day Iraq, India, Egypt, China, and Central and South America. This book was a bit of a self-discovery trip for Wood, as he had hitherto concentrated primarily on British history (from whence I know his work), venturing only to the limits of Europe previously.

Perhaps the Fertile Crescent of Iraq is highlighted both because it is the precursor of Semitic cultures (which give us Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, among many other things), but also because it was the first city culture to arise. All old cultures arose around rivers, for the sake of basic food necessity. In Iraq, there were agricultural settlements coalescing into cities as early as the seventh millennium BCE. These first settlement-builders were not Sumerian; they came later, about 4000 BCE, into an already-existing cultural structure. Who exactly the Sumerians were prior to this is still a mystery.

'Their language has no known affinities with any language, living or dead. But new discoveries concerning Elamite, the ancient language of Persia, may hold the key to Sumerian origins.'

Iraqi early cultures boasted the cities of Eridu (quite possibly the first city on earth), Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, and of course, Babylon. None of these ancient cities is still inhabited, mostly having been abandoned due to changes in the course of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Sumer has been conquered and war-ravaged many times, most recently again in the 1990s.

Indian history too is fascinating. The prehistory of India mostly went unknown until this century, when scholars began to take a serious look. While linguistic studies of Sanskrit have been going on for hundreds of years, it has only been in this century that the antiquity of Sanskrit and its place as a proto-language has been understood.

The lost cities of the Indus show that there were people before the Aryans in the subcontinent, particularly with the discoveries of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, and settlements occupying a space the size of western Europe, with extensive trade and culture. However, there was a period of about 1000 years in which there was no real urban culture in India, with the decline of the cities. Toward 600 BCE the Ganges and Jumna civilisations grouped in kingdoms, largely Aryan, began to arise. Hinduism and Buddhism are largely products of this process.

China has a long, unbroken history. China was the last of the Old World civilisations to develop, nearly 1000 years after Iraq. The Chinese concepts of civilisation are very different from the West, and different from Indian, too. Cities began not as grouping for residence or trade or manufacture, but rather as royal enclosures surrounding the king, in which all the dichotomies of life were played out. This remained true to the days of the last emperor.

Culture grew up around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China. Confucius was the great shaper of tradition, and China experienced a cultural advance unparalleled by the other Old World civilisation. In fact, China remained possibly the strongest power culturally and militarily on Earth until about the year 1000; only its relative isolation from all other powers kept them out of China's influence. China's self-centred decline in the past millennium allowed the Western cultures to surpass China.

Egypt is discussed in terms of tradition of the pharoahs, city developments along the Nile, trade and literary achievements that are still fascinating today. The Pyramids are the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Egypt had an unbroken pharoanic rule for nearly 3000, until the time of Alexander the Great, and the continuing dominance thereafter of European-based empires. Egypt in fact consists of two kingdoms, the upper and lower. Strong natural frontiers kept Egypt safe during its development. Perhaps the first true city was Hierakonpolis, in the upper kingdom, with settlements able to be traced back to 4500 BCE.

In the Americas, Wood only really discusses the Central American cultures that arose around Mayan cities -- he does not do much work in the Peruvian/South American cultures. This is perhaps the one great flaw in the book. By 3000 BCE, there were settlements developing into cities in the Americas, but perhaps the first true cities was Teotihuacan, in Mexico. In 500 CE this may have been the largest city in the world, with 250,000 people. Independent of other cultures, they built pyramids and temples comparable to the Old World examples, a testament to the similarity of the human mind to response to the same symbolic ideas. Mayan culture spread throughout Central America as a result of indigenous efforts most likely, but Teotihuacan was a place of trade and pilgrimage and learning for these people.

With the collapse of the Mayans, the Aztecs gained ascendancy in the older region around Teotihuacan. The Aztecs, given to bloody sacrificial rites, were perhaps the first civilisation to be exposed to the Old World orders, and the first to suffer conquest at their hands.

Wood concludes with a chapter on exploration, conquest, investigation, research, and finally, some small understanding of the world which has been lost, but which generated ours.