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  • What Is Ancient History?

    What Is Ancient History? by Scheidel, Walter;

      • GET 10% OFF

      • The discount is only available for 'Alert of Favourite Topics' newsletter recipients.
      • Publisher's listprice GBP 25.00
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        12 337 Ft (11 750 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 1 234 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 11 104 Ft (10 575 Ft + 5% VAT)

    12 337 Ft

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    Availability

    Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
    Not in stock at Prospero.

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher Princeton University Press
    • Date of Publication 17 June 2025
    • Number of Volumes Print PDF

    • ISBN 9780691236650
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages328 pages
    • Size 215x139 mm
    • Language English
    • 789

    Categories

    Long description:

    From one of today’s most innovative ancient historians, a provocative new vision of why ancient history matters—and why it needs to be told in a radically different, global way

    It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity’s pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.

    For Scheidel, ancient history is when the earliest versions of today’s ways of life were created and spread—from farming, mining, and engineering to housing and transportation, cities and government, writing and belief systems. Transforming the planet, this process unfolded all over the world, in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, often at different times, sometimes haltingly but ultimately unstoppably. Yet it’s rarely studied or taught that way. Since the eighteenth century, Western intellectuals have dismembered the ancient world, driven not only by their quest for professional expertise but also by nationalism, colonialism, racism, and the idealization of Greece and Rome. Specialized scholarship has fractured into numerous academic niches, obscuring broader patterns and dynamics and keeping us from understanding just how much humanity has long had in common.

    The time has come, Scheidel argues, to put the ancient world back together—by moving beyond the limitations of Greco-Roman “classics,” by systematically comparing ancient societies, and by exploring early exchanges and connections between them. The time has come, in other words, for an ancient history for everyone.



    "Compelling. . . . Scheidel has given us much food for thought about our beautiful, magical Antiquity. I recommend. . . everyone who is concerned with Ancient History to purchase this book."---Mark Beumer, Kleio-Historia

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