The archaeological finds included the remains of textiles, plants, and animals, and some female terra-cotta figures that suggested the existence of a "mother goddess" cult.The initial excavation was interrupted in 1965, and answers to the riddles of this Neolithic site remained unresolved until Ian Hodder initiated a new campaign of research in the 1990s. Described by Colin Renfrew as "one of the most ambitious excavation projects currently in progress, undertaken at one of the world's great archaeological sites," this has been a truly multidisciplinary undertaking, involving the participation of over one hundred archaeologists, scientists, and specialists. Hodder and his colleagues have established that this great site, dating back some 9,000 years, provides the key to understanding the most important change in human existence--the time when people moved into villages and towns, adopted farming as a way of life, and began to accept domination of one social group by another. Through meticulous excavation procedures and laboratory analyses, they peel back the layers of history to reveal how people lived and died and how they engaged with one another, with their environment, and with the spirit world.Full of insights into past lives and momentous events, "The Leopard's Tale" is superbly illustrated with images of the art, the excavations, and the people involved in this world-famous dig.

    Matthew Arnold called Emerson’s essays “the most important work done in prose.”   INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDE

    Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.

    Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, this book combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale. Illustrations.

    In Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, Dr. Mertz explores the breathtaking reality behind her fiction by casting a dazzling light on a remarkable civilization that, even after thousands of years, still stirs the human imagination and inspires awe with its marvelous mysteries and amazing accomplishments.A fascinating chronicle of an extraordinary epoch—from the first Stone Age settlements through the reign of Cleopatra and the Roman invasions—Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs brings ancient Egypt to life as never before. Lavishly illustrated with pictures, maps, photographs, and charts, it offers tantalizing glimpses into Egyptian society and everyday life; amazing stories of the pharaohs and the rise and fall of great dynasties; religion and culture; folklore and fairy tales; stories of the explorers, scientists, and unmitigated scoundrels who sought to unravel or exploit the ageless mysteries; and breathtaking insights into the magnificent architectural wonders that rose up from the desert sands.Revised and updated to include the results of the most recent historical research and archaeological finds, Dr. Mertz's book is unhampered by stuffy prose and dry academic formality. Instead, it is a vibrant, colorful, and fun excursion for anyone who's ever fantasized about exploring the Valley of the Kings, viewing up close the treasures of the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, or sailing down the Nile on Cleopatra's royal barge.

    In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous “Coffee Crisis” that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the “third-wave” of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs. As the scope of coffee culture continues to expand, Uncommon Grounds remains more than ever a brilliantly entertaining guide to the currents of one of the world’s favorite beverages.

    The time is A.D. 1250 and the city is Troyes, capital of the county of Champagne and site of two of the cycle Champagne Fairs—the “Hot Fair” in August and the “Cold Fair” in December. European civilization has emerged from the Dark Ages and is in the midst of a commercial revolution. Merchants and money men from all over Europe gather at Troyes to buy, sell, borrow, and lend, creating a bustling market center typical of the feudal era. As the Gieses take us through the day-to-day life of burghers, we learn the customs and habits of lords and serfs, how financial transactions were conducted, how medieval cities were governed, and what life was really like for a wide range of people.For serious students of the medieval era and anyone wishing to learn more about this fascinating period, Life in a Medieval City remains a timeless work of popular medieval scholarship.

    It was in search of the fabled Spice Islands and their cloves that Magellan charted the first circumnavigation of the globe. Vasco da Gama sailed the dangerous waters around Africa to India on a quest for Christians--and spices. Columbus sought gold and pepper but found the New World. By the time these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers set sail, the aromas of these savory, seductive seeds and powders had tempted the palates and imaginations of Europe for centuries. "Spice: The History of a Temptation "is a history of the spice trade told not in the conventional narrative of politics and economics, nor of conquest and colonization, but through the intimate human impulses that inspired and drove it. Here is an exploration of the centuries-old desire for spice in food, in medicine, in magic, in religion, and in sex--and of the allure of forbidden fruit lingering in the scents of cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and clove. We follow spices back through time, through history, myth, archaeology, and literature. We see spices in all their diversity, lauded as love potions and aphrodisiacs, as panaceas and defenses against the plague. We journey from religious rituals in which spices were employed to dispel demons and summon gods to prodigies of gluttony both fantastical and real. We see spices as a luxury for a medieval king's ostentation, as a mummy's deodorant, as the last word in haute cuisine. Through examining the temptations of spice we follow in the trails of the spice seekers leading from the deserts of ancient Syria to thrill-seekers on the Internet. We discover howspice became one of the first and most enduring links between Asia and Europe. We see in the pepper we use so casually the relic of a tradition linking us to the appetites of Rome, Elizabethan England, and the pharaohs. And we capture the pleasure of spice not only at the table but in every part of life. "Spice "is a delight to be savored.

    his incontrovertible excellence as an historian, and his authoritative and highly readable prose'. Recent events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics have since reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history of political evolution and upheaval. This second edition has been updated in the light of those events, with a final chapter addressing the impact of the dramatic changes that have taken place. It also includes additional maps to illustrate nationalities, languages and political divisions across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

    The book told the story of how 1492 sparked the movement of organisms, both large and small, in both directions across the Atlantic. This Columbian exchange, between the Old World and the New, changed the history of our planet drastically and forever.The book The Columbian Exchange changed the field of history drastically and forever as well. It has become one of the foundational works in the burgeoning field of environmental history, and it remains one of the canonical texts for the study of world history. This 30th anniversary edition of The Columbian Exchange includes a new preface from the author, reflecting on the book and its creation, and a new foreword by J. R. McNeill that demonstrates how Crosby established a brand new perspective for understanding ecological and social events. As the foreword indicates, The Columbian Exchange remains a vital book, a small work that contains within the inspiration for future examinations into what happens when two peoples, separated by time and space, finally meet.

    Now available in a compact, more convenient format, it offers the same text and many of the illustrations which first appeared in the widely acclaimed Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, the book explores a period of profound diversity and change, focusing on all aspects of medieval history from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the new nations which fought the Hundred Years War. The Oxford History of the Medieval World also examines such intriguing cultural subjects as the chivalric code of knights, popular festivals, and the proliferation of new art forms, and the catastrophic social effect of the Black Death. Authoritative and eminently readable, this book will entertain as much as it will educate.

    With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds—the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire—into remarkably similar societies and states. The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circle, newly united under the Romans, hosted a politically sophisticated, economically advanced, and culturally developed civilization—one with philosophy, banking, professional armies, literature, stunning architecture, even garbage collection. The rest of Europe, meanwhile, was home to subsistence farmers living in small groups, dominated largely by Germanic speakers. Although having some iron tools and weapons, these mostly illiterate peoples worked mainly in wood and never built in stone. The farther east one went, the simpler it became: fewer iron tools and ever less productive economies. And yet ten centuries later, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the European world had turned. Slavic speakers had largely superseded Germanic speakers in central and Eastern Europe, literacy was growing, Christianity had spread, and most fundamentally, Mediterranean supremacy was broken. The emergence of larger and stronger states in the north and east had, by the year 1000, brought patterns of human organization into much greater homogeneity across the continent. Barbarian Europe was barbarian no longer. Bringing the whole of first millennium European history together for the first time, and challenging current arguments that migration played but a tiny role in this unfolding narrative, Empires and Barbarians views the destruction of the ancient world order in the light of modern migration and globalization patterns. The result is a compelling, nuanced, and integrated view of how the foundations of modern Europe were laid.

    Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe; Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR’s Lend-Lease program in London; and John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain. Each man formed close ties with Winston Churchill—so much so that all became romantically involved with members of the prime minister’s family. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and reluctant American public to back the British at a critical time. Deeply human, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, Citizens of London is a new triumph from an author swiftly becoming one of the finest in her field.

    He proposes that we look at evolution as a battle between genes instead of between whole organisms. We can then view changes in phenotypes—the end products of genes, like eye color or leaf shape, which are usually considered to increase the fitness of an individual—as serving the evolutionary interests of genes.Dawkins makes a convincing case that considering one’s body, personality, and environment as a field of combat in a kind of “arms race” between genes fighting to express themselves on a strand of DNA can clarify and extend the idea of survival of the fittest. This influential and controversial book illuminates the complex world of genetics in an engaging, lively manner.

    As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world. No one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.