In this volume the author resurrects the world of goddess-worshipping, earth-centred cultures, bringing ancient matriarchal society to life.

    We Africans in America have been socially engineered to reject our past, and far too many of us live in a state of suspended animation.

    Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.