Brian M. Fagan - Ancient Lives

Golden pharaohs, lost cities, grinning human skeletons: Archaeology is the stuff of romance and legend! Many people still think of archaeologists as adventurers and treasure hunters, like Indiana Jones of Hollywood movie fame seeking the elusive Holy Grail. These enduring images go back to the late nineteenth century, when archaeologists like Heinrich Schliemann could still find lost civilizations like Troy and excavate three royal palaces in a week. Today, few, if any, archaeologists are like Indiana Jones. They are scientists, not adventurers, as comfortable in an air-conditioned laboratory as they are on a remote excavation site. The development of scientific archaeology from its Victorian beginnings ranks among the greatest triumphs of twentieth-century science.

Archaeology has changed our understanding of the human experience in profound ways. A century ago, most scientists believed that humans were no more than 100,000 years old. Today, we know that our origins go back over 6 million years. Our predecessors assumed that the Americas were settled about 10,000 years ago and that farming began around 6,000 years ago. New excavations date the first Americans to at least 16,000 years ago and the beginnings of agriculture by 12,000 years ago. Most important of all, archaeology has changed our perceptions of ourselves and our biological and cultural diversity. Welcome to the fascinating world of archaeology and prehistory!

Ancient Lives is a celebration of the only scientific discipline that studies human biological and cultural evolution over enormously long periods of time. These pages explore more than 6 million years of the human past.

The book is divided into two halves, and into seven parts as well. The first seven chapters cover the basic methods and theoretical approaches of archaeology. The remainder of the book takes a journey through prehistory, from human origins to those dramatic moments when Spanish conquistadors gazed upon the Aztec capital in the Valley of Mexico and at the wealth of the Inca civilization in the Andes. The remaining parts subdivide these broad themes into more manageable chunks.

, Ancient Interactions, focuses on people and their interactions, on the study of ancient religious beliefs, and on the all-important topic of explaining the past.

, which covers the thousands of years of migration that took modern humans from our African homeland into every corner of the Old World, and, by around 15,000 years ago, into the Americas.

In describes the origins of Asian civilization, culminating in the stupendous Khmer states of Cambodia.