World Prehistory
In New Perspective

This 1977 book provides a bibliography designed to give access to the whole of man's history before written records began.

Grahame Clark (Author)

9780521291781, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 December 1977

576 pages
24.4 x 17 x 3 cm, 0.91 kg

'It is amazing how much information, and how many ideas, Professor Clark managed to pack into this book. Nothing of importance seems to have been omitted … Similarly there are few prehistorians who could have written such a wide-ranging survey and yet have fallen into so few errors … Taken as a whole, World Prehistory is the most up-to-date survey not only of world prehistory as a whole but of the individual areas with which it is concerned.' The Times Literary Supplement

'To qualify as human, a hominid has, so to say, to justify himself by works: the criteria are no longer biological so much as cultural'. In this 1977 book, Professor Grahame Clark goes on to trace the origins and development of human culture, in all its diversity, throughout the world. He follows the intellectual, material and social progress of mankind in each major region, from the earliest stone industries of two million years ago to the gradual and still incomplete attainment of literacy over the last five thousand years. He takes full account of peoples still preliterate when encountered in recent times by anthropologists as well as of those which nourished the great historic civilizations of mankind. Throughout he emphasizes the close relationship between environment and the character and speed of cultural development. The narrative is generously illustrated with photographs, drawings and maps, and there is a carefully selected list of references to the main sources used.

List of tables, Acknowledgements, Preface
Part I. Early Prehistory: 1. Evolution of man as an organism
2. Environmental change
3. Palaeolithic hunters and foragers
Part II. Beginnings of Civilization in South-West Asia: 4. Background
5. The transition: 9000–6000 BC
6. Neolithic/Charcolithic settlement
7. Emergence of civilization in south Mesopotamia
8. Civilizations of the Highlands
Part III. Foundations of European Civilization: The Stone Age: 9. Upper Palaeolithic hunters and artists
10. Mesolithic hunter-fishers
11. Late Stone Age farmers
12. Farmers and hunter-fishers
Part IV. Europe: From Metallurgy to Civilization: 13. Early metallurgy
14. Minoan–Mycenaean civilization
15. The Bronze Age in temperate Europe
16. Antecedents of classical Greece
17. The barbarian world in the pre-roman Iron Age
18. Antecendents and expansion of Roman civilization
19. The Iron Age in northern Europe
20. Christianity and the end of European prehistory
Part V. The African Achievement: 21. The Stone Age
22. Ancient Egyptian civilization
23. The opening up of sub-Saharan Africa
Part VI. The Indian Sub-Continent: 24. Early prehistory
25. Later prehistory
26. Protohistory
Part VII. East Asia: 27. China
28. Japan
29. South-east Asia
Part VIII. North and Middle America: 30. Late Pleistocene settlement
31. Middle American sequence
Part IX. North America: 32. Temperate zone
33. Arctic zone
Part X. South America: 34. The first settlers: Andean zone
35. Intermediate zone: marginal territories
Part XI. Australia and Oceania: 36. Australia
37. Oceania
Index.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]